


A Death in the Family

by Rainne



Series: How Steve Rogers Got His Groove Back [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AO3 1 Million, Darcy Feels, Doombots, F/M, I Don't Even Know, Misunderstandings, My First Avengerfic, PTSD Steve, Steve Has Issues, What am I doing?, bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-12 15:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1190823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes tragedy has a way of bringing people together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Now available in [podfic format](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2301314) thanks to the amazing Secondalto!

“My granny was born the same year as you.”

When the soft voice spoke to him across the common area, Steve Rogers jumped. It was a forgivable reaction - he'd thought he was alone on the floor. The undignified squeak of alarm he let out, on the other hand, was entirely _unforgivable_ and he knew he was bright red when he turned around to see who had spoken.

He suppressed a groan. It was Darcy Lewis, Dr. Foster's assistant, who had come with the tiny doctor and Thor when Thor decided to make Avengers Tower his “Midgardian” home. Steve kind of liked Dr. Foster - when she came out of her science bubble she was personable and nice - but Darcy, for some reason, set Steve's teeth on edge.

It wasn't that she was unlikable, or rude, or disagreeable. In fact, she was very polite and mostly agreeable and possibly very likeable. But she was loud and sarcastic and obnoxious, she flaunted her physical assets, she poked fun at everything, she seemed to take nothing seriously, and she just grated on Steve's nerves the way nobody else did except maybe Tony Stark.

And now this. Her _granny_ was born the same year as him. Was this a prelude to some kind of mockery about his age? Because he was really getting sick of that. He opened his mouth to say something to that effect, but then he stopped and looked at her - really looked, and realized that something was very wrong.

Darcy was curled up on one end of the couch under the window rather than sprawled across the one in front of the television. She wasn't wearing her usual obnoxiously bright colors - instead, she was dressed in a pair of fleece pajama pants and an oversized black hoodie. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her feet were bare and she wasn't bouncing along to the music on her iPod - in fact, it was nowhere to be seen. And her eyes, instead of being lined with black, were rimmed in red.

She scrubbed at her face with the back of one hand. “Sorry,” she said, her voice still soft and almost dull. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

“It's fine,” he said, waving a hand. “Darcy... is something wrong?”

She sniffled, rubbing at her face again. Then she shifted, and he saw that there was something thin and square in her lap: a picture frame. She held it out to him. Intrigued, he came back across the common area and took it, looking down at the picture. In it, two female figures stood at a table in a brightly lit country kitchen, scooping what looked like jam onto pastry squares. One of them was obviously Darcy, around seven or eight years old, wearing a flour-sack apron over a patchwork jumper, her brown hair tied up in two tight braids that fell over her shoulders. The other was a woman in her seventies, gray hair pulled back in a bun, also wearing a flour-sack apron over her workaday dress. Both of them were beaming broadly at the camera.

“That's your granny?” he asked unnecessarily.

Darcy nodded anyway. “Her name was Žofie, but everyone calls her Sophie. She and my grampa Rudolf came to the U.S. in 1938, just after they married. It wasn't exactly safe to be a Jew in Eastern Europe.” She shrugged, making a face, and he nodded, sitting down beside her and waiting for her to continue. After a moment, she did so. “they came in through Ellis Island, but there was a big Czech community in West, Texas - that's the town of West, not the western region of the state.” She smiled slightly. “So they lived in Brooklyn for a few years, saved up some money, and took the train. My uncle was born in West in 1941, just a few months after they got there, and my aunt in 1945, and then my mom in 1948.”

Steve did some very fast math in his head. “You must have been quite the late-life surprise.”

Darcy grinned then, wide and bright. “You'd think so, wouldn't you?” she said. “I was actually adopted. My mom couldn't have kids, so she and my dad waited until they were financially stable and then they picked me up at the bargain basement sale.”

“Oh,” he said, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry.”

She waved it off. “Nothing to be sorry about. You were almost right.” The smile slid off her face after a moment and she sighed, leaning against his shoulder and looking down at the photograph he was still holding. “They died when I was six. There's a train track crossing out near where we lived, and at the time it had lights but no bars, and it was late one night and the lights didn't work and they were crossing the tracks and a train hit the car. I was told later - once I was old enough to understand - that they probably never knew what hit them.”

Steve's heart clenched. “God, Darcy, I didn't know. I'm so sorry.”

“How could you have known?” she asked reasonably, glancing up at him. “It's not like I've got a sign on my head.” She shrugged. “Anyway. My aunt and uncle had both moved away and had their own families, so I went to live with Granny and Grampa.” She reached out, one finger gently touching her granny's face in the photo. “This was when she was teaching me how to make kolaches. She also taught me to sew, knit and crochet, grow my own vegetable garden, all the things a girl had to know to be marriageable in the Old Country. She used to tell me, 'Darcy, you'll never catch a husband if you can't feed him up right.' Big believer in that old saw about the way to a man's heart being through his stomach.”

Steve laughed softly. “She sounds amazing.”

“She is.” Darcy paused, then swallowed hard. “She was.”

He'd been half-bracing himself for this since the moment he sat down. “She's gone?” he asked softly.

Darcy nodded. “I just got a call from Aunt Nora a couple hours ago. She was supposed to go to a spaghetti dinner at her temple. One of the ladies came by to get her, and she didn't answer the door. They f-found her in her chair with her knitting in her lap; they said it l-looked like she just went to sleep and didn't w-wake up.”

She was crying in earnest now, and Steve had never known what to do with a crying dame, so he put his arm around her in the most comforting way he could think of and hoped for the best. She, either not noticing or not caring about his awkwardness, turned and buried her face in his chest, painful sobs wracking out of her with every breath. He shifted the photo out of his lap and her into it, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight until her crying eased and she sat back, wiping at her eyes again. “Sorry,” she muttered, reaching out half-heartedly to swipe at the damp patch on his shoulder. “I didn't mean to...”

“It's fine,” he said softly. “I'm just glad I could be here for you.”

She gave him a watery smile, then shifted out of his lap and stood. “I'd better get to bed,” she said, glancing at the clock that showed a time alarmingly close to midnight. “I've got to try and catch a flight out tomorrow.” She took the photograph when he handed it to her, hesitated for a second, and then suddenly swooped down to press her lips against his cheek. “Thanks,” she said softly, her breath caressing his ear. And then she was gone, and only the faint scent of her perfume that lingered on the air and the warmth against his skin assured him that it had really happened.

He sat there for a long moment, in shock, and then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, flicking through his contacts and pressing a familiar face. “Pepper? Hey, sorry to bother you so late, but I need a favor...”

***

It would be an understatement to say that Darcy was surprised the next morning when she got the message from Pepper, via JARVIS, that Tony's private jet would be available to carry her from LaGuardia to the regional airport in Waco whenever she was ready to go. It would be even more of an understatement to say that Darcy was stunned to find that Steve had volunteered to take her to the airport. But when he offered to go with her to West, Texas and her crazy family and her granny's funeral, it would not be an understatement to say that she was absolutely flabbergasted.

“Why?” was the only word she could manage.

He shrugged. “Because nobody should have to do this alone?”

She narrowed her eyes at him even as she adjusted the strap of her duffel across her body. “Steve. As much as I'm sure we bonded last night when I snotted all over your shirt, let's be honest. You hate me, insofar as you are capable of hating another human being. So why the hell would you come all the way to Texas with me?”

He frowned. “I don't hate you.”

“Yeah, okay,” she replied, the sarcasm all but dripping from her voice. “That's why you make such a visible effort to avoid me as much as possible, to the point that if I'm in a room, you do everything you possibly can to be in a different room.” She gave him a slight smile. “It's okay, really. I mean, it bothered me at first, because I'm really not used to people hating me, but I got over it. I wouldn't have even bothered you last night if Jane had been around, but of course she's in Asgard this week with Thor, so.” She shrugged. “Anyway, thank you, but you don't need to feel obligated to me just because I bawled all over you last night. I'll be fine. And I'll catch a cab to the airport; there's no need for you to put yourself out.”

She stepped around him, trying not to whack him with her duffle as she passed and headed for the elevator. He stared at her back as she walked away, processing the lightness of her tone combined with the hurt hidden underneath. And before he'd even realized it, he called out, “Darcy, wait!”

She paused, her shoulders tightening visibly. “Steve, I need to get going; time and tide wait for no man, and Aunt Nora's going to be really pissed if I'm late getting in.”

In just a few long strides, he was beside her, turning her gently to face him. “Darcy,” he said again, “I don't hate you.”

She sighed, closing her eyes briefly, and then opened them and looked up at him with the best fake smile she could muster. “Okay,” she said. “You don't hate me. Thanks. I appreciate knowing that. Now I really have to go - ”

“Let me come with you,” he blurted.

She blinked. “What?”

“Let me come with you. At least then we can talk on the plane, and maybe... I don't know. Sort this out, between us? And then if you really don't want me to stay, I'll come back to New York after the plane drops you off.” He paused, then gave her his most winning Captain America smile. “Please?”

She rolled her eyes, but the smile on her face became a little more genuine. “Okay. But hurry up; if you make me late, I'm letting Aunt Nora yell at _you_.”

“Well, I make it a policy never to get yelled at by other people's aunts,” he replied. He jogged back down the hallway to his own apartment door, ducking in and snagging the duffel he'd packed for himself the night before, and he was back again in under a minute, pressing the elevator button. “Come on, let's go, time's wasting, Aunt Nora's going to be mad if you're late.”

She narrowed her eyes at him again. “No, see, sarcasm is _my_ job,” she said, stepping through the silver doors as they opened. “It just looks _weird_ on you.”

“Hey,” he protested, “I can have hidden depths.”

***

The plane was ridiculous by anyone's standards. “If there's a gold toilet on this plane, I swear to Thor, I am throwing it out the hatch,” Darcy muttered as she pushed her duffle into an out of the way space.

Steve blinked at her from across the room. “What?”

“Oh.” Darcy paused. “There was this singer called Elvis Presley, who was big in the late fifties and the sixties. He had a private plane and all the sinks and toilets were gold.”

Steve shook his head slightly. “That sounds... ridiculously wasteful, frankly.”

“Tell me about it,” Darcy replied. “It's completely ridiculous. Kind of like this,” she added, waving at the opulence around them.

One of the flight attendants stuck her head in from the galley. “Would you care for anything to drink or eat?”

Darcy paused, her eyes cutting across to Steve's. He could see the moment she gave up the struggle, and bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing when she said, “What have you got?”

Once they were settled with drinks - water for him, soda for her - and snacks, the flight attendants vanished into the galley, and Darcy studied Steve from a spot catercorner to him on the L-shaped sofa. “So,” she said simply.

“So,” he replied, setting his water aside and leaning forward a little bit, resting his elbows on his knees. “I don't hate you.”

“You do a hell of a good impression,” she replied. There was no acid in her tone; it was a simple statement of fact. “I honestly thought you couldn't stand the sight of me.”

“I've barely seen you in the last few weeks,” he protested.

“I know,” she said. She looked down at her glass. “I figured... you lived there first. Plus, you're the superhero. I'm just that girl that came along with Jane that nobody really knows what to do with. So I figured it was only fair for me to make myself scarce, because I'm going to lose to Captain America every time.”

He blinked, his face going blank in surprise. “You... thought they'd kick you out?”

Darcy laughed softly. “Steve, if they knew how much you don't like me, I'd be gone from there so fast that the speed of my passing would probably take paint off the walls. You're the important one. I'm just the Pop-Tart fetcher.”

“Let's back up for a minute,” he said. “I'm still trying to figure out why you think I hate you.”

She set her own glass aside and reached up to rub at her temples. “I suspected for awhile. There wasn't anything concrete, just... you know, I started noticing that every time I said something, you sort of rolled your eyes or ground your teeth. And then every time I'd get near you, you found a different place to be. But I knew for sure when I heard what you said to Clint.” She sat back on the sofa, pulling her legs up underneath her. “After the Doombots.”

He paused for a moment, confused, and then suddenly it came back to him.

_He was in the gym, the late afternoon sun streaming in through the western windows, pounding the everloving crap out of a punching bag to work out his frustration. When Barton walked in, Steve paused, nodding at his teammate in acknowledgement. Barton nodded back. “You okay?”_

_Steve nodded. “Just some bruising.” The afternoon had featured an incursion of Doombots into Manhattan. He, Tony, Barton, and the Hulk had gone in to clean them up. It had been a very mild skirmish, as far as skirmishes went, except for one thing: the inexplicable presence of Darcy Lewis right in the middle of the battleground. She'd apparently managed to be in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, and one of the bots had her in its claw. In the process of retrieving Darcy, Steve had taken one hell of a hit to the ribs, though fortunately none of them were broken. On the way back to the Tower with her in tow, he'd given her a very vicious piece of his mind about getting out of the way when trouble came._

_And now Barton was watching him from across the gym. “What?” Steve asked, almost defensively._

“ _What is it with you and Darcy?” Barton asked._

“ _What do you mean?” Steve deflected._

“ _I mean,” Barton replied, “that everyone else, including Natasha even, finds her to be at least tolerable, but it's like she gave you cancer of the puppy. What gives?”_

_Steve gritted his teeth. “She just gets on my nerves.”_

_Barton raised an eyebrow. “Okay,” he drawled, long and slow. “Any particular reason?”_

_Steve turned back to the punching bag. “She just does. She's loud and annoying and she's always in the middle of everything, and then she goes and gets herself kidnapped like an idiot. So far, I haven't really seen any reason why she_ shouldn't _get on my nerves.”_

_There was no further reply, and when Steve glanced in that direction again, the gym was empty._

He rubbed at the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “How did you hear what I said? You weren't even there.”

She shrugged, refusing to look at him. “After everything... I asked him if he knew what your deal was. Because you just... you just yelled at me and... like I said, I knew I wasn't your favorite person, but then...” She paused, and he saw her throat work as she swallowed. “So I asked Clint if he knew what the matter was, if maybe you'd said anything to him. And he said no, but he'd try to find out. And so when he went into the gym to talk to you, I stood outside and listened.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, wondering if it was possible for him to feel like any more of a jerk than he already did. And then she raised one trembling hand to wipe surreptitiously under her eye, and he realized that it was, in fact, possible. “Darcy...”

“No, it's okay,” she said softly. Her voice shook a little bit, and she paused, clearing her throat before speaking again. “It's okay. Really. You're right. I _am_ loud, and I _am_ annoying, and I _am_ in the middle of everything, and I _did_ get myself kidnapped like an idiot. For what it's worth, I was trying to stop it from getting a little kid.” She wiped at her other eye, and then straightened up and put one of those patently false smiles back on her face. “But that's neither here nor there. The point is, I was making you miserable and I didn't even realize it. Once I knew, I made it a point to stop doing it as much as possible. Like I said, you're the important one, not me. And it's not like I don't have a TV in my apartment that I can watch movies on just as well as the one in the common area.”

“Darcy,” he said, making his voice firm. “I don't hate you. I shouldn't have said that to Clint. I was angry and frustrated and tired and I took it out on him, and on you by proxy, and that was wrong. And I wish you'd have come and talked to me rather than eavesdropping.”

She turned and stared at him, her expression incredulous. “Talk to you? Are you _kidding_ me? After what you said to me on the street? You called me a stupid, attention-seeking child. I would have literally rather died than talk to you after that.”

“I didn't - ” He paused. “Did I?”

“Amongst other things.”

He sighed, dropping his head into his hands. “I don't know what it is about you that brings out the worst in me,” he muttered. “Darcy, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I don't remember saying that; it was probably the adrenaline and the fear talking. I mean, it's bad enough realizing the Doombot has a captive. When I realized it was _you_ there? It was a thousand times worse.”

She made a soft, incredulous sound. He looked up at her to find her staring strangely at him. “What?”

“No offense, but like I said, I already knew I wasn't your favorite person. I was almost surprised that when you realized it was me, you didn't just let the thing have me.”

He frowned at her. “That isn't funny. I'd never do that.”

She raised her hands in immediate surrender. “I'm sorry.”

His phone chose that moment to beep with a text message, and she took advantage of his momentary distraction to escape into the aft restroom. He pulled his phone out and looked down at the screen. It was from Clint.

_Did I hear right? You're on Stark's plane headed to Texas with Darcy?_

_Yes,_ Steve texted back. _Her grandmother died and I'm escorting her home to the funeral._

There was a very long pause before his reply came back. _Be gentle with her._

Steve felt a frown of confusion crease his brow. _What do you mean?_

 _She's just a kid, and she's out of her depth with all us supers around,_ Clint replied. _And it's easier for you to hurt her. So be gentle._

Steve glared at the screen. _What the hell is that supposed to mean? Stop talking in riddles._

 _For the love of God,_ Clint replied, _are you that stupid? She LIKES you, you idiot. So go easy on her. You make her cry, I'll do my damnedest to make you cry._

He felt his eyes widen as he stared at the words on the screen. Darcy - _liked_ him? He sat there for a moment, dumbfounded, and tried to wrap his head around the idea. And then, unbidden, a memory came to him from her first week in residence at the Tower.

_Darcy was in the communal kitchen when he came through, washing up some dishes and bopping along to whatever music was blasting into her ears. Something smelled nice - and familiar, though he couldn't put his finger on what it was - and he tapped her shoulder to get her attention._

_She pulled her headphones out of her ears and smiled at him. “Hi, Steve,” she said. “What's up?”_

“ _I was just wondering if you were cooking something, because it smells really good in here.”_

“ _Actually, I am,” she said. She reached over and pushed a button on top of the stove, and a light came on inside the oven, illuminating the cake pan inside. “I found a recipe book at Strand, and it was all these really old recipes. This one's a spice cake from the Great Depression, and it has no milk or eggs or butter in it. And I thought, well, that's a win because, one, dairy free, and two, maybe it would be something you'd had before, or, you know, similar.”_

He couldn't remember exactly what he'd said to her after that, but he remembered the cake, and it had actually been quite good. And, apparently emboldened by her success, Darcy had tried out several more recipes before a bad day and a rough fight had given him the opportunity to snap at her when she asked him something about a recipe from “back then” - and she hadn't asked again, and the parade of familiar food had ended.

He looked up at her when she re-entered the room, and he heard himself speak before he'd consciously realized he was going to. “Why did you make that spice cake?”

She froze. “Wh- what?”

“That spice cake. The first week you lived in the tower, I came in and you'd made a spice cake. You said something about a recipe book from Strand. Why did you make it?”

She sat down carefully and put her head in her hands with a sigh. “I made it for you,” she admitted. “I found that recipe book and it was all about Depression-era cooking, and I know how comforting the right kinds of foods can be, so I thought it might be nice to make you stuff that might be your comfort foods, or at least close enough to them to maybe help you feel less...” She waved a hand helplessly. “Stranded.”

“That's why you made the pork chop stew, and the dumplings, and...”

“And the mock-apple pie, yes.” She sighed. “Why are we talking about this? You made it very clear that I wasn't helping, so I stopped.”

“But you were helping,” he said softly.

She raised her head and looked at him in patent disbelief, tears shining in her eyes again. “Bullshit,” she said flatly.

“Darcy, you _were_ ,” he said. “And I know I snapped at you, and I shouldn't have, but... you were right. The food helped. It was delicious, and the dumplings, I swear to you Darce, they were just like my Ma's.” He took a deep breath. “You didn't do anything wrong. In fact, I'm pretty sure most of this is my fault.”

She gave him the same kind of look she might have given to a talking dog. “Okay. You might have to explain that one, because I'm feeling a little stupid over here.”

He came and sat down again, and this time he dropped onto the couch right next to her. “I... I haven't actually told this to anyone,” he said, his voice low. “It's... they say I don't have anything to be embarrassed about, but...” He shook his head. “You have to understand, things were different back then. You didn't talk about things, you didn't get therapy, you just... you just worked through it and got on with your life. And a lot of guys did, and they did all right, and they got on with it, but a lot of guys didn't, and they'd drink.” He leaned back against the back of the couch. “The guys my dad's age, they called it shell shock. And you could see it on their faces sometimes.”

She blinked at him, a tiny indrawn breath the only indication of her shock. “Steve,” she said softly, “are you telling me you've been diagnosed with PTSD?”

He nodded. “That... they made me go to a therapist a couple of times. Nice enough lady, but...” He shrugged. “Anyway, that's what she said. From the war and everything that happened, and then from the... the wake-up.”

“Well, yeah,” Darcy said, her voice gentle. “That would be enough to traumatize anybody.”

“Yeah, and do you know what they did when they woke me up?” he asked, diverting slightly. “They built a mock-up of a hospital room from the forties, tried to make me think I was still there. They even had a Dodgers' game playing on the radio. Only problem was, it was a game I was at.”

“Oh, those _idiots_ ,” she groaned.

He gave her a soft half-laugh. “Yeah. So, that went well.”

“I'm sure.” She reached out, laying a gentle hand on his arm. “So... is what you're trying to tell me that I've basically had the worst timing ever, and you don't hate me, I just keep accidentally stomping all over your buttons?”

He paused, considering that, and finally nodded. “Yeah, basically. Mostly.”

She sat there for a long moment before slowly leaning forward to rest her forehead against his shoulder. “Why didn't you just _say_ so, you idiot?”


	2. Chapter 2

They had reached a sort of detente, but it was an uneasy peace, and both of them knew how easy it would be to break it. Thus, they retreated to their individual corners - figuratively speaking. In a more literal sense, Darcy asked him if he liked thrillers. When he said he did, she asked one of the flight attendants about popcorn, took out her laptop, and pulled up _Strangers on a Train._ They watched in silence, munching the popcorn together.

When it was over, she asked him how he liked it, and he said he liked it pretty well. “I saw a couple of his flicks before I joined the army,” he admitted. “ _Rebecca_ , and _Saboteur._ They were both pretty good.”

Darcy nodded. “He got very well known later for his horror movies. They're different from the horror movies that you see today. These days the big ones tend to be what you might call torture porn - lots of screaming, lots of blood, co-eds getting murdered all over the place. But Hitchcock's movies were psychologically scary. _Psycho_ is the one that's probably the most well-known.” She paused, smiling slightly. “Janet Leigh dies very dramatically in it. It's cinematic gold.”

Steve laughed softly. “Well, then, you'll have to show it to me sometime.”

“Sure, I... I'd like that.” She gave him a soft smile, but anything else that might have been said was interrupted by the pilot announcing their descent. She closed her laptop and returned it to her bag, and both of them buckled their seat belts in preparation for the landing. They had to cross the tarmac to get into the airport itself (Darcy refused to let him carry her bag, and he might have actually sulked about that for a second), and Darcy took a moment when they entered the building to orient herself. Then she pointed. “There,” she said. “Let's get a car.”

There was no line at the Alamo rental counter, so Darcy strode right up, pulling her wallet out of her bag as she did so. “Hi,” she said to the young man behind the counter. “I need a car, please.”

“Compact, mid, or luxury?”

She opened her mouth to say _compact_ out of habit, then paused, turning back to run her eyes from Steve's feet to his head once, very slowly. Then she turned back to the young man. “How about an SUV?”

“Got a new Ford Escape,” the young man replied. “It's a hybrid.”

“Perfect.” Darcy passed her credit card and ID over the counter. A few minutes of typing and insurance later, he passed her the key and her copy of the paperwork, and told her where she could find the car in the lot. She thanked him politely and, with a glance at Steve to make sure he was still with her, headed toward the outside doors.

Steve, who had been watching the entire exchange, waited until they were in the car to ask her, “Do guys to that to you all the time?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Do what?”

“Stare at you like that.”

She paused, then suddenly glanced downward in understanding. “You mean at the girls?”

He sighed. “Yes. At your... chest.”

She bit off a grin. “You can say 'breasts'. It's acceptable.”

“No, it's really not,” he replied. “And the way he was staring at you really wasn't, either.”

She shrugged, maneuvering the car out of its space. “You get used to it. Half the time I don't even notice any more, unless the guy's being completely obnoxious about it.”

He frowned. “That's just...” He shook his head. “I know I sound like some kind of grumpy old fart or something every time I say this, but back in my day, you just didn't treat a dame like that.”

She gave him a slight smile. “You do, a little bit, but it's okay. I mean, it's totally natural that you'd be comparing what you're used to with what there is now. Some things will be better, some things won't. L.P. Hartley wrote, 'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.' It stands to reason that the future would be, too.”

Steve thought about that for a moment as Darcy navigated her way out of the congested airport parking lot and onto the highway. “You know, that makes sense,” he finally said. “Almost like if I was from, I dunno, Spain or something.”

“Exactly,” Darcy replied. “You've gone from a place where you're comfortable, you know the people and the places and the customs, and now you're someplace new and everything's different and you're having to find your way again.”

“My Ma and Pa were immigrants,” he offered. “They came over from Ireland.”

Darcy nodded. “So you probably heard a lot of the same things from them that I heard from Granny and Grampa,” she said. “Complaints about how different it is here, how they did things back in the Old Country, how it was better there before Hitler and the War, all of that.” She glanced at him before making a left turn. “Some of the complaints you have aren't so different.”

He thought about that, watching the scenery pass them by. “But when immigrants come here, they have to try to fit in,” he said. They stopped at a traffic light, and he watched as a woman with brown skin and black hair crossed the street, pushing a stroller that held a sleeping baby. “When in Rome, and all that stuff.”

“True,” Darcy said. “But nobody said it would be easy. You have the benefit of fitting in physically and already speaking the language - mostly. And your friends and family back home, you miss them, which is natural and nobody would begrudge you that for a second. But you also have new friends here, and you can... you can make a family, if you try. So.” She shrugged.

He turned in his seat and studied her for a long moment. “You're not secretly a therapist or something, are you?”

She laughed. “No. But I've been to grief counseling and I've taken some psychology classes and believe it or not, Steve, I've thought about you before and what you must be going through.” She cast a sideways glance at him and added, mildly, “I'm not completely oblivious, you know.”

“I didn't think you were,” he replied, his tone equally mild.

She bared her teeth in an approximation of a grin. “Sorry. That _was_ a little much. All I meant was...” She paused, considering her words. “No. I keep wanting to say something like 'I can only imagine how hard it is for you,' but that's really not true. There's no possible way I can imagine how hard it is for you. And I won't disrespect your feelings like that. But for what it's worth, I'm sorry for your losses.”

He swallowed hard. “Thanks,” he said softly, and he meant it.

She nodded. “Granny would've liked you,” she said, almost to herself. He swallowed again but didn't reply.

The house was compact and squat, a two-story Craftsman-style house with dusky blue siding, white trim, red shutters, and a porch that wrapped around one side. When Darcy pulled into the driveway, she parked beside a minivan with Louisiana plates and sighed. “Aunt Nora's already here.”

Steve cast a glance at her. “Would it be overstepping if I asked...?”

She cracked a slight grin. “What's my deal with Aunt Nora? It's not that complicated. Every family has a black sheep, and I'm it. Everything I do, everything I believe in, and everything I stand for runs completely contrary to everything Aunt Nora does, believes in, and stands for, and she loves to take every opportunity she can get to let me know that. In detail.” She grimaced slightly. “It used to make for really fun Thanksgivings until Great-Uncle Joe threatened to lock her in the shed.”

Steve raised a questioning eyebrow at that, and Darcy's grin got wider. “He'd have done it, too. I'm his favorite.”

“I'm beginning to see why you are the way you are,” Steve commented mildly.

“I was essentially raised by several sets of grandparents and grandparent-equivalents who all thought I was super-precious and could do no wrong,” she admitted. “I'm a danger to both the living _and_ the dead.” With that, she unbuckled her seat belt and took a deep breath. “Might as well go on in. I'm sure they know we're here by now.” She opened the door and climbed out, reaching into the back seat to grab her duffel. Steve followed suit, trailing her up the sidewalk to the front door of the house.

She paused for a moment with her hand on the doorknob, taking a deep breath and visibly steeling herself for what came next. He reached out a hand and tentatively placed it on her shoulder, giving her a warm squeeze, and she turned a smile on him that was filled with such gratitude that it almost made him uncomfortable. Then she turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Two boys were sitting in the middle of the living room floor, watching television, and their heads swiveled toward the door as it came open. “Darcy!” they both shouted, jumping up and running across the room to attack her with hugs.

She laughed, opening her arms to squeeze them both tightly even as she herded them back into the room so that Steve could get into the house. “Hi, guys,” she said, grinning broadly. “How's tricks?”

“Good,” they said in unison. Then the smaller one continued, “Great-granny died. I'm sad.”

“I know,” Darcy said, ruffling his hair. “That's why I'm here.” She hugged him again. “I'm sad, too. But I'm also happy I get to see you. Can you say hi to my friend Steve, who came with me?”

The boys turned, chorusing hello at him, and Darcy turned as well. “Steve, my cousins Bryce and Jared, ages eight and six respectively. Aunt Nora's grandsons.”

Someone had taught the boys well, because they both stepped forward and offered their hands to shake. Steve shook both hands and said, “It's nice to meet you. I'm Steve Rogers.”

The younger boy gasped, staring up into his face. “No way.” He turned to look at Darcy, his eyes huge and wide, and then back at Steve again. “Seriously?”

“Uh-oh,” Darcy said softly.

Steve raised an eyebrow, but before Darcy could say anything else, his question was answered. “Oh my God, it _is_ you! You're Captain America! Holy cow!” He turned, sprinting for the stairs and shouting at the top of his lungs as he started up, “Mom! Grandma! Darcy brought Captain America! Come see Captain America!”

Darcy covered her face with one hand. “Crap. I didn't even think about the boys recognizing you.”

“It's okay,” Steve said, grinning awkwardly at Bryce, who still stood there, gawking. “Really.”

“Is it true?” Bryce blurted.

“It's true,” Steve replied. “But since I'm off duty and I didn't bring my costume, you can just call me Steve, okay?”

“Okay.” Bryce continued to gawk at him for a moment before an explosion sounded from the television, and he was distracted by the cartoon still playing on the screen. He wandered back to the middle of the room and plopped down.

Darcy took a deep breath. “Great. Well, come on, let's go lay claim to my room before Aunt Nora decides someone else needs that bed more than I do.” She led him up the stairs where Jared had so recently vanished. When they arrived at the top, they could hear the boy at the back of the house, begging someone to _come on, come see, hurry,_ and Darcy just shook her head, turning and opening a nearby door. “Oh, good.”

She flipped a light switch and Steve blinked at the room in front of him. “Uh.”

Darcy grinned. “Come on. Nothing bites. Except me, but that's only if you ask nicely.”

Steve stepped into the room, feeling oddly like a giant-sized interloper. There was a twin bed in the corner, a desk under the window, and a bookshelf on the opposite wall. The walls themselves were painted bright blue and covered with posters for bands he'd never heard of. He turned a full circle in place, taking in the room. “It's you all over.”

“I know, right?” She pulled out the desk chair and dumped her bag into it, unzipping it and pulling out the dress she'd brought. With a quick snap of her wrists, she shook it out. Then she carried it over to the closet and hung it up neatly. “If you want to hang anything up, feel free; I know how you are about wrinkles.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I think you're being sarcastic with me.”

“What? No!” she replied, giving him the most patently false wide-eyed expression she could manage. “I would never be sarcastic with a Great American Icon!”

He narrowed his eyes, even as he dropped his duffle on the floor. “Don't think I didn't hear those capital letters.”

She smirked. “Wouldn't dream of it.”

“Darcy?” A voice floated down the hallway. “Darcy, are you here?”

Darcy tensed, her fingers clenching into fists for just a moment before she took a long breath and released them. “Oh, here we go,” she muttered. Then she raised her voice. “In here, Aunt Nora.”

Footsteps came pattering down the hallway. “There you are. Poor Jared, I swear, what did you say to him? He's totally confused. He thinks you've brought _Captain America_ with you.” The bedroom door swung open, and a woman in her late sixties stood in the door, dressed in jeans and a button-up shirt, her iron-grey hair bobbed off at chin length. She stared at the sight of Darcy, who had just flopped down onto the end of the bed, and Steve, who was in the process of hanging up his suit.

“Aunt Nora, my friend Steve Rogers. Steve, my aunt Nora Vickery.”

Steve set his suit aside and moved toward the door, his hand out. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Vickery, though I'm real sorry about the circumstances. Darcy's been telling me about your mom, and she sounds like a pretty amazing lady.”

“She... she was,” Nora managed, continuing to stare at Steve as though she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. Her eyes cut to Darcy, and then back again. “You're not _really_ Captain America, are you?”

Steve gave her his best aw-shucks grin. “Afraid so, ma'am.”

Nora's eyes cut to Darcy, then back to Steve, and then back to Darcy. In a tone Steve wasn't sure he liked, she said, “And how, exactly, did _you_ meet Captain America?”

“Remember Dr. Foster, who I did the internship with in New Mexico that summer? Well, it turns out, _Steve_ works with her boyfriend.” Darcy smiled, stressing Steve's name when her aunt seemed stuck on his alternate identity.

Nora looked skeptical. “And who is Dr. Foster's boyfriend?”

Darcy smiled sweetly. “Thor.”

***

Dinner that evening was even more uncomfortable than the meeting in Darcy's bedroom, and Steve would previously have laid money on there being nothing more uncomfortable than that. But it was, because it involved sitting around the table with Nora and her daughter (about ten years older than Darcy, slightly unpleasant, called Angela) staring at him in awe and wonder, and the two boys peppering him with questions about being a superhero and the other members of the team.

And then Angela said something about Spandex, a reference that Steve didn't understand but a tone that was just on the other side of unflattering. Darcy shoved back from the table so hard that her chair fell over behind her, snatched up her glass of water, and threw it - the whole glass, not just the water - directly into Angela's face. Without a word, she turned and left the table. They heard her footsteps ascending the stairs, and her bedroom door slammed a moment later.

The boys stared in awe, their eyes huge.

Steve folded his hands in his lap and gave both women his mildest expression. “Well,” he said in his most even tone, “that was incredibly awkward.”

Nora and Angela exchanged glances. Both the boys remained riveted on Steve.

Steve considered the two women who sat across from him for a long moment. Angela was still dripping water and holding Darcy's glass in her hands. Steve cocked his head slightly. “You know, I got the impression from Darcy that you guys like to kind of give her a hard time. Not in so many words, but she described herself as the black sheep of the family, and sort of indicated that you don't really approve of her and her life choices. And that's fine; you're not required to approve of her or me or anything else, and I don't actually know you, so I don't really care about you or what you think.” He paused and shifted slightly in his chair so that he was leaning forward just enough to be ever-so-slightly menacing. When he spoke again, it was very definitely in what Tony liked to call his I-Am-The-Captain voice. “But I _do_ care about Darcy, and I will _not_ allow you to treat her poorly. Is that understood?”

Nora swallowed hard and nodded. Angela actually whispered “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He folded his napkin and set it beside his plate. “Please excuse me.” He stood, pushed his chair back in, and righted Darcy's as well. Then he followed her up the stairs, stood still outside her door, and listened.

From inside the room, there was no sound at all. From downstairs, there was similar silence for a very long moment before he heard both boys say a long, drawn-out “ _Wow_.”

Shaking his head slightly, he tapped on Darcy's bedroom door and waited for her to let him in. After a moment, the door cracked just slightly open. When she saw that it was him, she stepped back and opened it wider, granting him entry. He closed the door behind himself and leaned against it, raising an eyebrow at the sight before him.

Darcy had opened one of her windows and was now scrambling out through it onto the roof of the porch below. She scooted to one side, and he decided to take that as an invitation to follow. It was a tight squeeze - that window hadn't been made with his serum-enhanced shoulders in mind - but he joined her on the roof. Much to his surprise, a small ash tray was waiting, holding a fat little cigarette. He raised an eyebrow at her. “I didn't know you smoked.”

“Not nearly as much as I used to, and this is probably stale as hell,” she replied. “I just found it in my stash box.” The quiet snick of her lighter was followed by a long, slow inhalation and then a sudden fit of coughing. “Ugh, I was right,” she managed, her eyes watering a bit. “Stale and old. God, I'm not even sure how old this is.”

Steve caught the scent of the smoke on the air and blinked, feeling suddenly foolish. “That's not a cigarette.”

“Sure it is,” she replied easily, taking another drag. This one went down a little easier, and she held it for a moment before releasing it. “It's just not tobacco.” She gave him a sideways glance. “I'm sure you don't approve.”

He shrugged. “I've heard they just legalized it in a bunch of places,” he replied. “And some of the guys used to get it in Europe, when we were over there.”

“You ever try?”

He sighed. “Doesn't touch me,” he admitted. “Just like alcohol.”

“Can't get drunk, can't get high.” She clicked her tongue. “Man, that _sucks_.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Sometimes it really does.” He leaned back, watching the stars wheel overhead.

They sat there together for several minutes without speaking before she finally said, “I'm sorry you had to see that.”

“Is that why you didn't want me to come along?” he asked, curious. Even after their detente on the plane, she'd still seemed a little ambivalent about letting him accompany her. He'd thought it was residual concern over their shaky new friendship, but now he was starting to think it might have been something else.

She shrugged, then sighed. “It's a little embarrassing,” she admitted. “And it didn't used to be so bad, when Granny and Grampa and Uncle Joe and everyone was still around; they always made her stop. But now there's nobody left. Granny was the last one.”

“What about - didn't you say you also have an uncle?”

Darcy nodded. “But he's not any help. He doesn't like conflict, so when she starts, he just gets up and goes in the other room.” She sighed. “I shouldn't have lost my temper. That'll just make it worse.”

“I don't think it will,” Steve replied, thinking about the look on Nora's face when he'd leaned forward and delivered his message.

She cut her eyes in his direction. “Did you say something?”

He paused, considering the relative merits of claiming innocence, and then shrugged. “I _may_ have let them know that I wouldn't just sit by and let them treat you poorly.”

She studied him for a long moment before setting aside the half-smoked joint and leaning over to hug him tightly. “That was really sweet,” she mumbled against his chest.

He smiled slightly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and hugging back. “Sometimes I'm not a complete jerk,” he admitted.

Darcy laughed. “And sometimes I'm not a raging psycho bitch. Aren't we the pair.”

He released her slowly, almost reluctantly, and leaned back against the wall again. “What was it like, growing up here?” he asked. “Even in the twenties, New York was huge and crazy and busy. I can't imagine growing up in a little town like this.”

“Oh, it was quiet,” Darcy replied. “Idyllic, almost. Like something you'd see in a movie. Granny and Grampa didn't believe in television as a babysitter, so I wasn't allowed to turn it on before supper except on Saturdays, for the cartoons in the morning. And then, after The Smurfs, it got turned off again and I got booted out the door.”

“Go play outside, huh?”

She nodded. “Yep. There were a whole bunch of us in the neighborhood, and we were all free range kids. We'd get on our bikes and ride everywhere - the playground behind the school, the municipal swimming pool, whoever's house had a mom at home to make us sandwiches. Or sometimes Granny would make kolaches for us and we'd all pile into the kitchen and eat. We'd play baseball or football in the streets. I remember one time, Doug Pastorek put a baseball through Mr. Krasny's picture window. That was less fun, but Mr. Krasny was also the baseball coach at the high school, and he put Doug on the team when he made it to ninth grade.”

Steve laughed. “That's a lucky shot.”

“You'd think so,” Darcy replied. “But you know how the jocks always get the girls?” When Steve nodded, she continued, “He was the pitcher that took the Varsity team to a state championship trophy. He got _all_ the girls. And then he knocked up two of them. _Two of them_ , Steve. Senior year.”

Steve felt his eyes try to bug out. “ _Two_ of them?”

Darcy nodded, a slight smirk crossing her face. “Yeah. He got lucky though. Jennie Peters had a scholarship to Northwestern and her parents decided they weren't letting her screw up her life because she made a stupid mistake. They took her up to Dallas and took care of the problem, so to speak. The only reason I know about it is because we were besties and she told me in strictest confidence. To be honest, I'm not a hundred percent sure _he_ knows Jennie was pregnant.”

“Do you know what happened to the other one?” Steve wondered.

Darcy's slight smirk became a full-blown, shining smile. “ _She_ now lives in a trailer park on the north end of town. _He_ had to give up his baseball scholarship and join the Air Force in order to pay the child support.”

He cocked his head at her. “I'm sensing some animosity.”

“Schadenfreude is my favorite flavor,” she replied, “and she was a bitch to me in high school.”

Steve laughed at that. “You know,” he said, “the longer I'm here, the more I think maybe this trip was actually a very good idea. I'm seeing sides of you that I didn't even know you had.”

Darcy grinned widely. “Just wait until the rest of the family gets here,” she said, “and I go completely nuts and start foaming at the mouth.”

“Not to worry,” Steve replied. “Tony showed me how to take video on my phone.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to take a moment to say a sincere thank you to everyone who has subscribed, bookmarked, and/or left comments or kudos. I was super nervous about diving into a new fandom like this, especially with an incomplete WIP, and you have all been so gracious and welcoming that it has warmed the cockles of my nonexistent heart.
> 
> Also, I wanted to give you all a heads-up that updates will probably not be very regular, since I am a PhD student and my free time is limited, but that I will never leave you hanging longer than I have to. <3
> 
> Also, there are **possible triggers for PTSD issues** in this chapter.

“So, just out of curiosity,” Steve said as he made his way back in through the window a bit later, “where will I be sleeping tonight?”

“In here,” Darcy replied, gesturing at the twin bed. “With me.”

He paused and studied her with narrow eyes, as though trying to determine whether or not she was kidding. She studied him in return with the blankest expression he'd ever seen on her face. “I got bad news for you if you think there's enough room on that thing for both of us,” he finally said.

She cracked then, grinning broadly. “Not a chance,” she assured him. She reached over and lifted the bedskirt, revealing a what looked like a mess of bars topped by a second mattress underneath. “It's got a trundle bed,” she explained. “So, two whole beds. Your modesty will be preserved, though I'm not promising anything about your lower back. Neither one of these things has got anything like decent lumbar support.”

Steve snorted and started to say something when there was a tap on the bedroom door. Darcy looked up, then got a sudden, devilish gleam in her eye. “Just a second!” she called, then turned to Steve. “Want me to owe you a favor?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”

“Shenanigans. You up for it?”

He grinned. “I'm always up for shenanigans. Well, usually.”

“Take your shirt off,” she said.

He blinked at her. “You said what?”

“Take your _shirt_ off,” she hissed, shoving him toward the bed.

The light bulb went off in his head, and he glanced at her over his shoulder. “You sure?”

“ _Very_.”

“Okay.” He complied quickly, shrugging out of both the button-up shirt - unbuttoned, per Tony's explicit instructions about recent men's fashions - and the plain white tee shirt underneath. He dropped them on the floor in the middle of the room and kicked his shoes off while she dragged his duffle into the floor and pulled the bedclothes out of order, then he seated himself with his back against the headboard. She bent over and scrubbed her hands through her hair to muss it up, kicking her own shoes off and then pulling off her sweater to reveal the tank top underneath.

Then, slightly breathless, she walked over and opened the door, giving her Aunt Nora a full and excellent view of the shirtless super soldier sitting on her bed and her own state of slight disarray. “What?”

Nora's mouth opened and closed a few times in surprise, her eyes riveted to Steve's shirtless chest, and he felt himself flushing slightly. Darcy waved a hand in front of her aunt's face. “What do you want?” she demanded.

Nora blinked, shaking her head slightly as if to clear it, and turned her eyes back to Darcy, who was giving her the stink-eye. “I just wanted to let you know that we have an appointment at the funeral home tomorrow morning at nine,” she said.

“Thanks,” Darcy said flatly. “Anything else?”

Nora shook her head, and Darcy shut the door again, turning the lock loudly. Then she walked toward Steve, paused, squealed loudly, and deliberately flopped herself down onto the bed, causing its springs to shriek angrily.

Steve choked with laughter at the sound of Nora's footsteps hurrying away from the door. He rolled off the mattress and landed on his knees on the floor, reaching for his tee shirt and pulling it back on over his head. “You are a bad person, Darcy Lewis,” he said, but he grinned at her as he said it.

She grinned back. “The worst,” she agreed. “But that was perfect and hysterical. Thank you.”

“No problem. That was actually kind of fun.”

“Yes, it was,” Darcy replied, grinning wickedly. Then her expression turned slightly smug. “And I bet there won't be any more comments about Spandex after that.”

He pulled out the desk chair, moving her duffle, and seated himself in it, canting it back on two legs and propping his feet up on the mattress. “What was that about, anyway? I didn't get what she meant. I mean, I knew it was unkind, but...”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “She was insinuating that you were gay,” she explained.

Steve blinked. “Why would she do that?”

“To be insulting,” Darcy explained. “More to me than to you; she was basically trying to insinuate that I had to get my gay friend to come with me and pretend to be my boyfriend.”

Steve shook his head. “You know, I just don't understand people like that.”

“Me either,” Darcy replied. “You know what's funny, though? I've talked to other people who have pretty decent, loving families just like mine and it seems like almost everybody has at least one person like that in their family. I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter how much love your family has, some people are just assholes.”

He burst out laughing. “You might be right about that.”

Darcy grinned. “Well, since we have to be up early, I think it's bedtime. If you want to go change first, I'll get the bed set up.”

Steve nodded, moving to retrieve his nightclothes from his bag. “Where...?”

“Down the hall, second door on the right.” She gripped the desk, pulling it away from the bed to make room for the trundle.

Steve nodded, stepping outside and making his way down the hall as quietly as possible. The television downstairs had been switched to a news broadcast, so he assumed that the boys had been put to bed, and he didn't want to wake them. The bathroom door stood open when he approached it, so he stepped inside and shut it behind him, turning the lock and then flipping the light switch.

He stood at the counter and stared at himself in the spotted mirror for a long few moments. He'd actually managed to sleep through the night for the last couple of days, so for once he didn't have dark circles under his eyes. He needed a haircut, though.

He set aside his clothing on the counter and brushed his teeth, then used the toilet and washed his hands before changing into his sleep clothes - a black tee shirt, gray sweatpants, and a pair of thick athletic socks. He wrapped his dirty clothes up in a little roll, sighed at his reflection, and left the bathroom. When he got back to the bedroom, he couldn't help but smile at the sight that greeted him. Darcy had shoved the desk all the way across the room, leaving a space of about three feet between the two beds. The one in the corner had a coverlet that was a simple, solid cream color; the coverlet on the trundle where Darcy now sat, in her tank top and a pair of soft cotton shorts, was dark blue, and emblazoned with...

He narrowed his eyes at the bedspread. “Are those pictures of actual people?” He paused, reading the text printed along the side of the fabric. “What is... I can't even pronounce that.”

Darcy blushed. Steve stared in awe at the bright red color that crawled up her neck and filled her cheeks as she replied, “NSYNC. It's a boy band. I was really into them when I was twelve.”

“Boy band?” he repeated, the words somehow feeling dirty in his mouth. “What the hell is a boy band?”

“It's a musical group made up of conventionally attractive yet oddly nonsexual teenage boys that sing manufactured pop music. Most of the time they don't play their own instruments; they just sing and dance. They're designed to appeal to suburban white girls between the ages of eight or so and whenever they discover actual adult music and realize that they've been listening to garbage for the last decade.”

Steve considered this information for a long moment, his eyes flicking back and forth between Darcy's red face and the grayscale images on the bedspread. Then he pointed at one of the pictures. “What the hell's that kid done to his hair?”

“ _Do not judge Lance Bass,_ ” Darcy hissed.

Steve grinned widely.

Darcy sniffed, grabbed her toiletry bag, and stalked out of the room with as much dignity as possible for someone who had Eeyore stamped on her derriere. Steve resolutely blamed the unexpected printing for the way his eyes followed her until she disappeared from view. Then he tucked his dirty clothes into his duffle, kicked it under the bed, and climbed in.

His feet hung off the end of the mattress and he snorted softly in amusement. He hadn't had that problem since moving into Stark's tower; the man believed in creature comforts, and the beds in those apartments were ridiculously huge and comfortable. It had made Steve, accustomed to cheap flops and then army barracks (and sometimes the bare ground) feel very strange at first. Now, of course, he was used to it, but lying there with his heels hanging off the end of Darcy's childhood bed put him in mind of being in the barracks. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the sounds of other men around him, snoring or coughing or shifting in their beds or just breathing, the sound of men existing in one room together.

He forced his eyes open, pushing the memory away as he heard Darcy come padding back down the hall. She pushed the door shut again, flipped the light off, dropped her toiletry bag on the desk, and then climbed into bed under that ridiculous comforter. “I've got the alarm set for seven,” she said. “Is that okay?”

“That's fine,” he assured her.

“Okay.” The bedsprings squeaked for a moment as she got comfortable, and then she yawned. “Hey, Steve?”

“Hmm?”

“Thanks for coming with me. It's... it's nice having someone here.”

“You're welcome,” he said softly.

“Good night.”

“Good night, Darcy.”

Within minutes, her even breathing told him she was sound asleep. He closed his own eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to settle his thoughts. He calmed his breathing - never let it be said he couldn't learn anything from a man with a giant green rage-monster inside him - and began relaxing his muscles, waiting for sleep to overtake him.

The sudden jolt, as of falling from a great height, brought him back to instant and total wakefulness. There was no disorientation - he knew exactly where he was and who he was with - but he had the sudden and intense certainty that he was surrounded by danger nonetheless. Darcy slept peacefully in the next bed, occasionally making tiny sounds or shifting in her sleep, but outside the room, Steve was certain, all was not well.

As silently as possible, he rolled over on the bed, getting his hand into his duffel and pulling out the knife Natasha had given him. It wasn't his usual weapon, of course, but he hadn't brought his shield, and the knife would be better for close quarters combat if they came in. He slipped it from its sheath and took up a waiting position on the bed, relaxed enough to maintain it while Darcy slept, but prepared to spring into action the moment the door opened or a window was breached.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there in that vague, hyperaware twilight state, but at some point in the darkest hours, Darcy rolled over and flung the covers back. She stood up, scrubbed at her face, and shuffled out the door before he could manage to make his voice work to stop her. He heard her pad down the hallway to the bathroom, heard the toilet flush and the water run in the sink, and then he heard her coming back again. She slipped into the room and closed the door quietly behind herself, and turned back toward her bed.

The sight of him half-sitting, half-crouching at the head of the bed got her attention, and the knife in his hand, its blade shining in the moonlight from the window, snapped her immediately into full awareness. “Steve,” she said, keeping her voice as even as possible, “is something wrong?”

He stared at her, hearing the words as though they were coming from underwater. He didn't speak, but he did blink a few times.

She moved toward him slowly, careful to keep her hands in view at all times and not make any sudden moves. His eyes stayed glued to her as she came to sit on her bed, within reach but not touching him. “Did you have a nightmare?” she asked, her voice pitched low and soothing.

“I...” He struggled with the answer to that question. “Falling? I think.”

“You dreamed about falling? Or you felt like you were falling?”

He struggled with it, his instincts screaming at him that there was danger but his mind fighting to focus on Darcy. “No, I...” He shook his head to clear it, started to run a hand through his hair and nearly brained himself with the knife. “Oh.” He stared at it like he'd never seen it before.

Darcy put one hand out. “Steve, can I have that?”

He looked at her, looked down at the knife, and looked back at her. And then he blinked, and something seemed to snap into place behind his eyes. “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, God.” He turned the knife in his hand immediately and slapped the handle into her palm. Then he curled up into a ball in the corner, his forehead coming to rest on his knees, his hands buried in his hair.

Darcy leaned, dropping the knife onto the desk across the room, then shifted to sit beside him on his bed, gingerly wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “It's okay,” she murmured. “Everything's okay.”

“It's not, either,” he contradicted her, shivering slightly in reaction. He leaned against her when she put her arm around him, so she gave him a gentle squeeze. “It's really not,” he said again, very softly.

“What can I do to make it better?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “There's nothing you can do.”

She sat there for a long few minutes, holding him and wondering desperately what she should do. When his shivering finally stopped, she had an idea. “You need to sleep,” she told him. “Would you be able to sleep if I sat up and kept watch?”

He started to sit up, shaking his head. “You shouldn't have to sit up and babysit me,” he began.

“I didn't say babysit you,” she replied, a slight tartness to her tone letting him know that while he would get sympathy from her, he wouldn't get pity. “You were sitting there having a hypervigilance episode and looking like they were all going to be bursting in here to get you if you so much as closed your eyes. I'm asking you if you would be able to sleep if I kept watch.”

He bit his lower lip, gauging her expression, and finally shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe?”

“Let's try that, then,” Darcy said. “You try to sleep, and I'll sit up and keep an eye on things.”

“What about you, though?” he argued. “You have to be functional tomorrow.”

She smiled, reaching up to ruffle his hair. “Put enough coffee in me and I'll be fine.” She shifted back over to her own bed. “Now, try to get some sleep. I don't want you being a zombie tomorrow, either.”

He nodded, stretching out again before curling up slightly to keep his feet up on the mattress. He watched in the dim light as she started to move into a sitting position, then stopped. “You know,” she said, her voice low and tentative, “I have something that might help.”

“Oh?”

She studied him for a moment, then stood and went to the closet. He watched her open the door, pulling on the chain to turn on the bare bulb inside, and stretch up to the shelf above the clothes hangers. When she turned around, she was holding something small in her hands that he couldn't identify. She flicked the light off again and shut the closet, then came and sat down again. With the moonlight once again bathing her, he could see what she was holding: a very battered, clearly well-loved teddy bear.

She swallowed a couple of times before speaking. “I told you my parents died when I was six.” When he nodded, she continued. “After the accident... I stopped speaking. For about a year. I just... wouldn't talk. And I had nightmares about it, about them dying, about the train, about being in the car - I wasn't, but I had a vivid imagination. Grampy Lewis - my dad's dad - brought me this one day. Told me he was an old soldier who'd seen my dad through some tough times, and that my dad would've wanted me to have him to get me through mine.”

Steve turned his attention to the bear, and realized with some surprise that it was wearing a tiny, camouflage shirt. He smiled slightly. “Your bear's a soldier.”

“You're damn right he is,” Darcy replied, smiling back. “And he's a damn good one, too. He got my dad through, and he got me through.” She fidgeted with the bear for a long moment, and then she extended it toward him. “And if you want, maybe this old soldier can help you get through your tough times, too.”

Steve hesitated only a moment before reaching out and accepting the gift she was offering him. “What's his name?” he asked, tucking the little toy close to his chest.

She smiled slightly. “Major,” she replied. “So I guess that means he outranks you.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possible triggers for nasty things being said about an adoptee. Ranty sort of end-note regarding same issue.

Steve was surprised to find when he woke up that he had slept through the night; usually, when he had an episode, he would be sleepless until he was able to exhaust himself. But when he rolled over and opened his eyes, the sun was just rising, and Darcy was sitting at the head of her bed, her back against the wall and her laptop open on her lap. She glanced over at him, watching him stretch and sit up. “Sleep okay?” she asked.

He nodded, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Thanks.” He cringed inwardly, waiting for her to say something about the events of the previous night.

She didn't. “No problem,” she said instead. She watched him yawn and stretch again, and then continued, “How do you feel about pancakes?”

“I feel very positive about pancakes,” he replied. “I'm fairly certain that pancakes should be generally categorized as a Thing Which is Good.”

She smirked. “I support this categorization. And the sooner you're up and dressed, the sooner we can go to IHOP.”

He tossed the covers back and stood. “Give me ten.”

“You've got twenty; make 'em count,” she replied, closing her laptop and setting it aside on the desk. Steve noticed that his knife was still lying there; he said nothing about it. Instead, he collected his clean clothing and made his way down the hall to the bathroom. 

When he came back, Darcy was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of a cartoon Hulk. She finished shoving the trundle bed back into place and stood, gesturing toward the desk. “Do you have a sheath for that?” she said. “If we leave it out where the boys could find it, I can guarantee there will be bloodshed, but I didn't want to just shove it into your bag and maybe cut up your clothes.”

“Yeah.” He dug the sheath out of his duffle and offered it to her. “You do it,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing, merely covered the blade. She offered it to him, but he shook his head. “I don't want access to it right now,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans.

She sighed. “All right,” she said softly. “I'm going to coddle you on this for now, because this is neither the time nor the place for anything else,” she said. “But you need to understand something, all right? I did a little bit of research while you were asleep, because I figured one of us ought to know what we're dealing with. And since we established yesterday that you don't hate me, I'm going to take a tentative step in saying that I think we're probably friends now. And as your probably-friend, when we get back to New York, I'm going to put my foot down in a very stompy manner about you seeing a professional. Okay?”

He grimaced. “Darcy - ”

Her voice cut across his, and there was a thread of steel beneath it that he'd never heard from her before. “That wasn't really 'okay' as in 'is this acceptable?' It was more a question of making sure you clearly understood the words I said in the order that I said them.”

He paused, studying her face, and then he nodded. “Okay.”

“Good. So.” She tucked the knife into her waistband at the small of her back, letting her t-shirt cover it, and retrieved her wallet from her bag. “You ready?”

“Yeah, just.” He gestured with the clothes in his hand, moving to put them away in his duffle. Darcy went into the closet and came out a moment later with a pair of black Converse that had been modified after-market with rhinestones. He pulled his own shoes on, and by the time he was ready, so was she. 

She paused a moment to look down at her sparkly shoes. “I should get some boxes while we're out,” she muttered. “If I don't get my stuff out, Nora'll throw it all away.”

Steve blinked at that. “Why would she do that?”

Darcy sighed, looking around the room she'd grown up in. “She'll want to sell the house immediately if not sooner. And it makes sense, I guess; there's no one to live in it any more, so it would just end up sitting here, falling apart. Still.” She sighed again, then shrugged. “Well, there's no sense standing here getting all maudlin over it,” she said, visibly shaking herself. “Come on; I hear pancakes calling my name.”

Steve followed Darcy down the stairs; Nora and Angela were both audible in the kitchen, but Darcy didn't call out to them, so neither did Steve. He thought he saw Nora's disapproving face at the front window as Darcy backed the rental car out of the driveway, but he thought it might be better not to mention it. Instead, he focused on the town around them, nodding appreciatively as Darcy pointed out landmarks while they drove. “It's so weird,” she commented, after pointing out one building that was one thing when she was growing up but was now something different. “You're gone for awhile, and like, intellectually you know things have changed, but then you actually see it, and your brain is like 'No, that isn't a bank, it's the Chicken Shack.'” She paused, glancing at him. “I think it's maybe a very light version of your stranger-in-a-strange-land syndrome.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “That felt like a reference I should know.”

She grinned. “You've read Exodus? 'And she bore a son, and he called his name Gershom; for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.' Chapter two, verse twenty-two. _But_ it's also the title of a science fiction book from the 1960s about a human kid who's raised on Mars with Martians coming back to Earth for the first time and having to assimilate into Earth culture.” She turned the car into the parking lot of the IHOP. “Speaking of being a stranger in a strange land... how much do you know about Jewish funerary traditions?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Steve admitted. “I figured it would probably be the same as any other.”

She gave him a slight smile. “In a country that's literally made of people from every walk of life, there's no such thing as 'the same as any other,' Steve,” she said gently. “So let me give you the rundown about what to expect, because Granny was very observant, even if the rest of us aren't, and I can assure you that none of us will be leaving anything out.”

He nodded, following her into the restaurant and waiting while the hostess seated them. They both ordered coffee and took a few moments to look over the menu. Then they ordered their breakfasts - pancakes, eggs, and bacon for both of them, in vastly different amounts - and once the waitress was gone, Darcy folded her hands on top of the table and studied them for a moment before she began speaking. “Okay, so, the first thing you should know is that in Jewish tradition, we're required to bury the dead as soon as possible after death. Allowing for people to travel in from out of town is, these days, considered to be a reasonable delay, but otherwise you get it done right away. Someone also has to sit with the body until it's buried; it used to always be family, but most of the funeral homes now provide that as a service.”

She took a sip of her coffee. “The  _Chevra Kadisha,_ which is a group of volunteers, come and prepare the body according to Jewish tradition; they wash it, wrap it in the shroud, and so on. We don't have wakes, because our tradition teaches that you don't look on the dead. It's considered disrespectful to look at someone who can't look back.”

Steve nodded, absorbing the information and waiting as she took a breath and struggled with her emotions. Once she had control of herself, she continued. “The funeral itself - which will probably be tomorrow - will be short. Readings from the Torah, the  _K'riah_ , no eulogies or anything - she didn't want them. We might even do it at the graveside, if her rabbi is okay with that.”

“ _K'riah_?” he asked.

“Oh. Um. Ritual rending of garments. It's a sign of mourning. Some people just do ribbons; I don't know what Nora wants to do.”

“What do you want to do?” he wondered.

She laughed softly. “Sit here and cry,” she admitted. She took another deep breath, and the conversation paused again as their food arrived. She paused as she looked down at her plate of bacon. “If Granny knew I wasn't keeping kosher right now, she'd be  _so mad_ ,” she said. Her voice was mild, but Steve could see how her hands shook as she placed them on the table. “Of  _all_ times for me to be Reform.” She closed her eyes, tilting her head back and pinching the bridge of her nose to try and stop the tears. A few slipped out anyway, and she swiped at them with her napkin.

After a few minutes, in control again, she took a bite of bacon and made a ferocious face at him. He grinned in return, and she continued. “After the ceremony, we actually fill the grave. Once it's over, we recite the Kaddish, which is a traditional prayer, and then we leave. Those who are not actually mourners - that's you, and the people from the temple, and her bridge club, and so on - form a double line called a  _Shura_ , and we come through the line and that's the first time people are actually allowed to offer condolences. Then we come back to the house, and the ladies from the temple will bring food. Bagels and eggs, for sure, and then probably your more traditional casseroles and stuff. And then we sit  _shiva_ .”

“I've heard that word before,” Steve commented.

She nodded. “It's the first period of intense mourning,” she said. “It's also a Hindu deity.” She gave him a slight smirk. “Anyway, when we sit  _shiva_ , people come and go from the house, and customarily they bring food and help out and things. The mourners aren't actually allowed to do anything useful. I have to admit, it's not my favorite thing; I prefer to keep busy, but you're not allowed. Shiva usually lasts seven days, including Shabbat, even though we don't mourn on Shabbat - unless there's a holiday. And I'm feeling really lucky right now, because tomorrow's Friday, and Shabbat starts at sundown, and then Rosh Hashanah starts at sundown on Saturday, so I can actually leave without feeling horribly guilty and having a conscience-induced meltdown in three weeks.”

“Rosh Hashanah I know about,” Steve said, latching on to the one thing he's certain of in the whole conversation - aside from Darcy's visible grief. “Jewish new year, right?”

“Yeah.” She nodded, pouring strawberry syrup onto her pancakes. 

He scooped up a forkful of scrambled eggs. “There used to be a Jewish family in our building, before Ma died,” he explained. “I used to pal around with their kid sometimes, Benny; he was about my age and he wasn't a jerk about me being sort of sickly.”

She smiled slightly. “Well, it's saving me a bunch of trouble this year. I really don't think I could have taken seven days of sitting  _shiva_ in the house with Nora and Angela.”

“I don't blame you,” he agreed. 

Darcy's phone beeped; she checked it to find a text message from Angela. “Speak of the devil.” She opened the message.  _Mom says not to forget the funeral home at 9:00._ She rolled her eyes. “Duh, Angela, I'm not likely to forget.” She texted back quickly, a simple  _I'll be there_ , and then put the phone away again. 

“How likely is it that I might embarrass myself at the funeral, since I have no idea what to do?” he asked. “Be honest.”

“Zero percent possibility,” Darcy replied. “If I'm not standing right next to you to tell you what to do, I'll make sure someone else is. You'll blend in just fine. Well,” she corrected herself, examining him. “With that hair and those eyes, nobody will mistake you for anything but a Gentile. But nobody will hold it against you.”

He smiled. “I'm so glad to hear it.”

“Now, me, on the other hand.” She grinned. “The _first_ thing I'm going to hear is 'He's very nice, for a _goy_ , but you couldn't find a nice Jewish boy? You're in Manhattan, for cryin' out loud!'” 

She so perfectly aped the Yiddish accent that Steve remembered from his childhood that he couldn't help erupting in laughter. “That just did not sound right coming out of your mouth,” he admitted once he was able to stop laughing. “That was so strange.”

Darcy snickered. “Just you wait, Cap,” she told him, pointing her last piece of bacon at him before popping it into her mouth. “You ain't seen  _nothing_ yet.”

***

There was only one Jewish funeral home in West, and they arrived at its front doors exactly at nine o'clock. The arrangements went quickly, and if Steve felt a bit awkward about being there at first, he was glad for it when Darcy and Nora butted heads over what Nora wanted for the service versus what Darcy's grandmother would or wouldn't have wanted. At one point in the argument over flowers (Nora wanted them; Darcy didn't), Nora said something in Hebrew that sounded very nasty, and Darcy closed her eyes and laid a hand on Steve's knee for a brief second, as though seeking strength from him before she turned and appealed to the elderly man in the skullcap who sat at the end of the table. “Rabbi. Please.”

Steve wasn't sure what the issue was - surely flowers were standard at any funeral? - but the Rabbi, after stroking his beard for a moment, said gently that Tradition held that flowers were a frivolous and unnecessary ornament. “That said,” he continued, “I have no objection if you'd like to have, perhaps, a small wreath or a spray atop the casket. But Nora, do remember that this isn't a Gentile funeral.”

Nora's lips tightened, but she nodded once. “Yes, Rabbi,” she said softly.

Once everything else had been arranged - the funeral would be held at eleven o'clock the next day, and would be a graveside service only, there would be a small spray of lilies on top of the plain casket, the  _K'riah_ would be done with ribbons - Nora left quickly, pausing only to tell Darcy over her shoulder that her Uncle Abe would be there by suppertime if she wanted to see him.

Darcy sighed, rubbing at her temples for a moment, then straightened and turned to the elderly man. “Thank you, Rabbi,” she murmured, taking his hands and squeezing them warmly. “I really appreciate all of this.”

“Of course, Darcy,” the Rabbi replied, patting her hands. “Sweetheart, remember: it's always a difficult thing when someone dies, and when it's the person who basically held everyone together, that makes it even more difficult. Just do your best to keep your temper, and remember not to bite anyone.”

Darcy laughed at that, a free, clear sound that warmed Steve all the way to his toes. She turned to him, including him in the joke. “When I was a kid at Hebrew school,” she explained, “I used to get into fights. I didn't usually get into trouble for fighting - especially not when I wasn't the one who started it - but I  _did_ get into trouble for using my teeth as a weapon.”

Steve grinned broadly. “Somehow, that doesn't surprise me a bit.”

From the funeral home, Darcy drove to a U-Haul store and bought several cardboard boxes in various sizes. They stopped for a mid-morning snack at a local kolache shop when Steve's stomach rumbled loudly, and there she loaded him down with a plate full of different kinds of kolaches. Some had different kinds of jam in them, others contained sausage, and they were all delicious. Even so, Darcy tried one and made a slight moué of dissatisfaction. “Granny's were better,” she confided to Steve in a very low voice. “When we get back to New York, I'll make you some.”

“These are delicious,” Steve replied, reaching for another sausage one. “If yours are better, I'm honestly not sure I can take it.”

“That's what she said,” Darcy quipped, grinning broadly and snagging one with cream cheese and apricots.

***

The afternoon was actually a great deal more pleasant than the previous day; when Darcy and Steve returned to the house, they found it suddenly full of people. Darcy introduced Steve to her uncle Abraham (“Call me Abe”), his wife Sarah (“Oh, you're from Brooklyn, hey, I'm from Brooklyn!”), and their five kids, Darcy's other first cousins, all of whom were considerably older than Darcy. “It's a little weird to be the youngest,” Darcy confessed in an undertone when he mentioned it to her. “They were all in high school when I was starting kindergarten. I absolutely hero-worshiped most of them.” She gave him a slightly crooked grin. “And then when they all started having kids, I was a little bit  _too_ old to be interested, and a lot of them hero-worshiped  _me_ .”

One thing that Steve found very interesting was the changed dynamic in the house now that it wasn't just he and Darcy against Nora and Angela. 

The first notice he got that things were different came when he left the living room, where everyone had gathered to retell old family stories. Darcy was surrounded there by her uncle's kids and older grandkids, and Steve had gone to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. Everything had been fine when he left; when he returned, it was to a room that had suddenly gone deathly quiet. The silence was so total that the electronic mayhem of whatever video game the littlest kids were playing in the basement was clearly audible through the floor. Steve blinked, his eyes going immediately to Darcy, whose face had gone pale.

He was just about to say something - though God alone knew what he might say - when Sarah spoke, her voice trembling slightly. “How dare you?” she whispered. Steve's eyes went to Sarah, and then followed her murderous gaze straight across the room to Angela. “How  _dare_ you?” Sarah repeated, her voice rising, and Steve found himself taking an instinctive step back from the righteous fury as Sarah rose from her seat on the couch. “I don't know what your mother's told you about that time,” Sarah continued, “but you have got the wrong impression about things, young lady, and I suggest to you that whatever you  _think_ you know, you shut your mouth  _right now_ .”

“No, you know what, Auntie Sarah, it's all right,” Darcy said suddenly, even as she clutched at the hands of the cousins she was flanked by on the other couch. “Let her say what she wants. I mean, it's not like I haven't heard it before.”

All eyes in the room went to Darcy, and Abe's mouth dropped open. “Darcy - sweetie - what?”

Darcy lifted her chin, though her face was still pale and her eyes wet. “I've heard it before. I know you guys have always tried to protect me from it, but I know. Dad was drunk. He was driving drunk and he got on the tracks and that's how come the train hit them. Nora told me already.” Her lips stretched in something approximating a smile. “A couple of days after the funeral.”

“Nora!” Sarah exclaimed, scandalized. “How could you? She was just a _child!_ ”

“So what?” Nora snapped back, shoving herself to her own feet and facing off against Sarah in the middle of the living room floor. “I've never understood you people. It's not like she's even _really_ Rebekah's kid! She's just _adopted._ I still don't understand why Mama didn't just send her back to the goddamn orphanage or wherever it is they store kids like that these days. She's not _family_ , she's just some wayward bastard brat _David_ brought home. She deserved to know that he was a piece of shit and he got Rebekah killed!”

At that, one of Darcy's teenage cousins - Steve thought his name was Isaac, but there had been so many at that point that he wasn't sure - leapt from the floor to his feet as well, his fists balled up. “You're a piece of shit, you - you - you piece of shit!” he shouted. 

Another silence descended on the room, this one tinged with the hysterical. After a moment, Darcy herself squeaked, “Your  _face_ ,” and when she did, the tension in the room broke. All of the cousins began laughing uproariously, falling over one another to share high-fives and fist-bumps, and even Abe and Sarah smiled, shaking their heads at the antics of the younger set. Darcy was buffeted from one direction to another with rough hugs, making her smile broadly at everyone around her. 

As the hysteria died down, Abe's eldest son stood up. Jacob was fifty-two, a retired Navy JAG attorney, and Steve had liked him immediately when they were introduced. Now, he came to very much respect the man. “Now that we've all got that out of our system,” Jacob said, his voice rumbling through the room, “I expect it's time we deal with the viper in our midst. Nora, you need to leave.”

Nora spluttered. “Excuse me?”

“I said, you need to leave.”

“You can't put me out of this house! This is my - my mother's house!”

Jacob smiled thinly. “In fact, yes, I can.” He took a deep breath. “I expect this is as good a time as any to make this announcement. Granny called me up a couple of years ago and asked me to come by and have a look at her will. I did, and she made some changes to it. It's all been filed, legal and proper, down at the county - that's where I was this morning. I have copies for everyone that needs one - I'll get you one, Nora, before you go. But the point I'm trying to make is, as of eleven o'clock this morning, this is Darcy's house.”

Nora and Angela's mouths both dropped open. “What?” Angela managed.

Jacob nodded. “That's right. Granny left the house and its contents, with a few exceptions, entirely to Darcy. So, I know you were thinking you'd be getting half of it and I know you were down at the realtor's because I saw your car there, but you can stow every bit of that thinkin' because this place here belongs to Darcy Lewis, free and clear, and the both of you can just get right on out.”

Nora's mouth worked silently for a long moment before she spoke. “Well,” she said in the soft, breathless tone of the falsely offended. “Well, I never.” She shoved herself to her feet. “I'll just go collect my things, then, and I'll be on my way.”

“You do that,” Jacob said, his expression unperturbed.

Angela stood as well, not speaking, and followed her mother out of the room. They both passed Steve as they left the room, but neither of them acknowledged his presence. Instead, they shoved rudely past him and Nora stormed up the stairs while Angela went to collect her two boys from the basement. 

Steve glanced into the living room and found that everyone was looking at him as he stood there with his glass of water in his hand, and he made a weak attempt at a grin. Sarah, who was still standing, chuckled softly. “Hello there, Steve,” she said. “Come in, don't be shy. We were just getting the annual family brawl out of the way early. We usually save it for Thanksgiving, but we figured that as long as we were all here, we might as well kill two birds with one stone.”

Steve gave a soft laugh. “I didn't mean to eavesdrop.”

“Oh, it's fine,” Darcy told him, waving off his concerns. “We've been known to air family grievances at top volume in a Denny's. On the Kappels Family Scale of Awkward Moments, this barely registers.”

Steve gave a soft half-laugh and entered the room, waving off an attempt to make room for him on the sofa beside Darcy. He dropped to the floor between her feet instead, and she nudged him with one sock-covered toe. He craned his neck, glancing up at her over his shoulder and giving her a gentle smile. 

There wasn't much conversation until Nora and Angela and the two very confused boys left the house; once they were gone, though, the atmosphere lightened considerably. Someone called to order pizza - Darcy remembered to tell them that Steve needs at least one extra-large of his very own - and someone else cracked wise about his food capacity. He blushed, embarrassed, until someone else shot back with another wisecrack and he realized that they weren't making fun of him, they were including him. After that he gave as good as he got, and though Darcy uncharacteristically spoke very little for the rest of the night, every time he looked at her, she was smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to apologize for the delay on this chapter. I had a really tough block on the nastiness at the end. 
> 
> On a personal note, I'd like to say the following: some of this came out of an article I read written by a woman who has two adopted daughters who are of a different ethnicity from herself. She was talking about the horrible things people have said both to her daughters and to her about her daughters - things like "Why didn't their REAL family want them?" and "Well, didn't you want kids of your OWN?" I wrote the scene at the end, at least in part, to deal with my own emotions regarding this issue.
> 
> My brother is adopted. He's been my brother since I was born. I don't get along with my brother because he's a raging d-bag, but he's still my brother, and I think if anyone said something like that to me about my brother, I'd probably get arrested for assault. So I guess this note is something of a PSA: remember when you're talking to adoptees, adoptive families, or about adoption in general, that it's not like what you see on Once Upon a Time, where a kid just "automatically" has more affection for a woman he's never met than he does for the woman who raised him and was his Mommy for ten years. Family is family, whether it's by blood or by choice, and there's no such thing as not-a-real-kid.
> 
> That went a little long and ranty, sorry. In other news, I'll try to have the next update faster than this one.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should note that I continue to be overwhelmed by the comments and kudos coming in on this fic. You guys are great, and I so very much appreciate knowing that you are enjoying my work. <3

When Steve stepped out the kitchen door onto the back porch, Darcy's cousin Jacob turned with a start, bobbling the cigarette in his hands before dropping it into the canna bed with a muttered curse. Steve grimaced slightly. “Sorry,” he offered, but Jacob waved his apology off as he went down the rickety wooden stairs to retrieve the thing.

“Not your fault, son,” the man replied. “Thought you were the wife sneaking up on me. I'm supposed to be quitting, so she's taken to pelting me with golf balls when she catches me with one.”

Steve snorted a soft laugh, then said, “I don't suppose I could bum one?”

Jacob raised an eyebrow, reaching into his pocket for the pack. “Wouldn't have thought you'd be a smoker.”

“I'm not, much,” Steve replied. “Couldn't, before, and couldn't get them much, when I was overseas. And the French ones tasted like horseshit.”

Jacob laughed, offering him a light from a gold-plated Zippo. “These won't be much better,” he warned. “I started buying the cheap and nasties, to convince myself I don't like the taste any more.” 

Steve shrugged, lighting the cigarette, and then handed the lighter back. Jacob pocketed it and the two of them stood in companionable silence for a few minutes, smoking and looking out over the falling night. “So,” Jacob said finally, casting Steve a sideways glance. “Captain America, huh?”

“Guilty,” Steve replied, shrugging slightly. 

“And you... work with Darcy?” Jacob pressed. When Steve paused, Jacob added, “I'm not trying to get into your business, son; I'm just curious. Darcy hasn't told us much about what she's doing in New York, but it seems like every time she does tell us anything, it starts with _you'll never believe what's attacked New York THIS time_.”

Steve chuffed a laugh. “Yeah, New York's a lot more exciting now than it was when I was a kid, that's for sure.”

“And all that stuff about how when you were a kid it was the thirties - is all that true, or is it just recycled war propaganda?”

“It's true,” Steve assured him. 

“You really punched Hitler?”

“Okay, _that_ part was propaganda. I punched an actor dressed as Hitler every night for a year on a USO tour.” He made a face. “After they turned me into a soldier, they decided I was too valuable to actually do any fighting, so they put me in a suit on a stage with a bunch of dancing girls and turned a soldier into an organ grinder's monkey.”

“Don't that sound like the Armed fuckin' Forces,” Jacob snorted. He flicked the butt of his cigarette off into the grass. “Let's spend a billion taxpayer dollars on tech and then stick it all off in an elephant's graveyard. Meanwhile, a bunch of our kids are in Afghanistan gettin' their arms and legs blown off by IEDs and the VA's so goddamn backlogged it's takin' three and four years for 'em to get a disability check, much less a peg leg.”

“Yeah, that sounds about the size of things,” Steve replied, his mouth twisting a bit. “I have to tell you, I've really soured on the military since I... got back.”

“I don't blame you, son,” Jacob replied. “My father was a vet. He spent damn near two years in Vietnam when I was a boy. When I graduated from high school, I didn't have the grades for a scholarship, so I went on and enlisted. Caught hell from Daddy - he was an Army fella, through and through, and could not believe I was goin' into the Navy.” He shook his head, smiling slightly. “First time I came home in my dress whites, oh, he was hot about it.” He grinned. “Can't say it wasn't half the reason I joined up, to tell you the truth.”

Steve grinned back. “I know exactly what you mean,” he admits. “Though I took the opposite route. My dad was Army, too - 107 th infantry. He was killed in World War I.” He sighed, flicking his own cigarette butt away. “Mustard gas.”

“Jesus.” Jacob shook his head. “Did you know him at all?”

Steve shook his head. “Died before I was born.” He shrugged. “He was the reason I kept trying and trying to enlist - which is what eventually got me involved in Project Rebirth.”

“Which is why you're standing here today instead of shitting your pants and staring at the wall in some old folks' home,” Jacob said briskly. “Or fertilizing some three-by-six plot somewhere. So don't get all maudlin on me, son, I'm not equipped for it.”

Steve laughed. “Do my best, sir.”

“Just Jacob,” Jacob corrected him. “So. What's on your mind?”

Steve glanced over at Jacob, then turned his gaze back out to the deep purple sky. “Do you know anything about this thing they call PTSD?”

“A bit,” the older man replied. “I'm no expert.”

Steve felt his shoulders tighten as he chose his words. “They tell me a lot of guys get it.”

“That's true,” Jacob replied. He paused, considering, and then shrugged. “My uncle Charlie - that's one of my mom's brothers - he was a POW in Vietnam for awhile. He had it. I can just barely remember him before he went; he was easygoing, laid back. When he came back, he was... different. Darker. Tense. Mama wouldn't let us be around him unsupervised any more. He couldn't hold down a job, he drank too much. After a while, he moved off down toward Navasota and lived in the woods. Ended up eating a shotgun barrel when I was in high school.”

Steve gave a low whistle. “Does that happen a lot?”

“It happened a lot to the boys who came back from 'Nam,” Jacob said. “There were things that happened in that war, son, that human beings were not meant to see, much less live to tell about.” He took a deep breath. “And it's happening to these kids in the Middle East, too.” He shook his head. “People weren't meant to live in fear like that. It does things to a man's brain.” He paused. “It does things to a man's _heart_.”

“Sometimes,” Steve said softly, “I think it stopped mine.”

“That may be,” Jacob replied. “But then again, maybe not. They say you were trapped in ice for seventy years.”

“That's true.”

“Well,” Jacob said, “maybe it's just takin' a while to thaw out.” He took a deep breath. “Texas summers are good about meltin' ice,” he added gently. Then he reached out and clapped Steve once on the shoulder, squeezing warmly, before turning and making his way back inside.

Steve stayed on the porch in the warm, still air for a while longer.

***

He went up to bed early; he didn't feel the need to watch over Darcy with this part of her family, because they had made it obvious that they were fully capable of doing so themselves. He opened the window and climbed out onto the roof, leaning back where he'd sat with her the night before and staring up at the stars.

  
There were more in the sky than he had ever seen in New York, even back when he was young. He'd seen starrier nights - on a mission in the back of beyond in Wakanda, for example - but even with the glow of Waco just off to the south, the night sky over Darcy's house was gorgeous.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, staring out into the universe and simply  _existing_ , but he came back to himself when Darcy poked her head out the window and spoke. “Hey,” she said softly.

He turned toward her, blinking slightly, and smiled a little bit. “Hey.”

“It's almost midnight,” she said. “Everyone's getting ready to go to bed.”

Implicit was the question: how did he think he would sleep tonight? He shrugged, shifting toward the window, and she stepped back to let him enter. He was surprised to find the trundle bed already out and set up; he hadn't heard a thing. He crossed the room and sat down on the side of the other bed. “I think I might sleep tonight,” he offers.

“Okay,” she said, clearly willing to take him at his word. “But I need you to promise me that if you have an episode, you'll wake me up.”

“Darce,” he began.

She cut him off. “No. I mean it, Steve. If you wake up panicking, or you have a nightmare, or you can't sleep, or  _whatever_ happens. I don't know how it works, what triggers it or whatever, but you're not going to just leave me there asleep and unaware if you're freaking out, okay? If something happens, you  _wake me_ . Promise, or I won't go to sleep.” She paused. “I won't be  _able_ to sleep.”

He sighed. “All right, Darcy,” he said, his voice low. “I promise that if something happens, I will try to wake you.” He held up a hand to forestall the obvious protest. “Sometimes I can't,” he admitted, his shoulders tensing. “Sometimes I can't  _do_ anything.”

She studied him, her eyes dark and penetrating, and he didn't know what she was looking for, but apparently she found it, because eventually she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I can understand that.”

Steve nodded once. Wordlessly, he pulled his sleep clothes out of the duffel bag and made his way down the hall, waiting his turn outside the bathroom door. When it opened, he found himself face-to-face with the same cousin of Darcy's who had leapt to his feet earlier in the day and shouted at Nora. He gave the tall, gangly kid a slight smile. “Isaac, right?” he asked.

The boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I just wanted to tell you thanks,” Steve said. “What you did earlier... it's hard to speak up sometimes, especially in a tense family situation. And you stepped up for Darcy, and I appreciate it.”

The kid's cheeks flushed. “No need to thank me,” he said, shrugging slightly. “I just... you know, it's not right, what she was saying, and I couldn't let her keep saying it.”

Steve nodded and offered the boy his hand. “You did good,” he said, and they shook hands as men who understood each other. Isaac turned and made his way up the hall to wherever he was sleeping, and Steve couldn't help but notice that the kid's shoulders were maybe a little more square than they had been when he opened the bathroom door. He smiled slightly, then ducked into the bathroom to change.

When he returned to the bedroom, Darcy was lying in bed already, her thumbs flying over the front of her cell phone. “Jane says hi,” she reported. “She and Thor are back.”

“Hi back,” he replied, stuffing his dirty clothes into his bag. “Did they have a good time?”

“Yeah, Jane's still not a big fan of Thor's dad, but at least he didn't call her a goat this time.”  


Steve chuffed. “That's an improvement worth celebrating, I guess.”

“No doubt.” She rolled over, dropping her phone onto the desk, and then rolled back again, settling herself as Steve flipped the overhead light off and curled up on the too-short mattress. Her voice was gentle when she said, “I saw you out on the porch with Jacob. Did you have a good talk?”

“Yeah,” Steve replied. “He's a good guy.”

“He really is,” Darcy agreed. “He seemed pretty impressed with you. Not with the shield,” she added. “With _you_.”

Steve hummed low in the back of his throat. “I kinda like this side of your family,” he said. “They're much nicer.”

She laughed softly. “Yeah. They really are.”

She drifted off to sleep not long after that, her breathing evening out, and Steve shifted around as quietly as possible, trying to get comfortable without being able to stretch all the way out. There was something lumpy under his ribcage, and when he finally sat up to dig it out, he discovered the little worn bear in his camouflage shirt. He held the toy in his hands for a long time, running his fingers over the soft fur and listening to the sound of Darcy's breathing. And then he tucked the bear against his torso, just under the blanket, and closed his eyes. He matched his own breathing to hers, and he thought about the stars, and he didn't even notice when he fell asleep.

***

The following morning was a whirlwind rush of final preparations. When Steve woke, Darcy was already up and wearing her funeral dress. It was a simple, black sheath with a skirt that reached her knees and a solid neckline that rested right at her collarbones, though the space between her collarbones and the base of her neck was covered with a sheer lace. She looked lovely, even as she stood barefoot in front of the mirror on the inside of her closet door and struggled to twist her hair up. Steve scrubbed at his face with his palm and sat up. “Hey,” he said softly.

“Hey,” came her reply, muffled by the bobby pins in her mouth. A muffled curse followed it as half of her hair fell down on the other side of her head.

He tossed the covers back and stood, stretching briefly before shuffling over to stand behind her. “What are you trying to do?”

She sighed. “Anything, really,” she mumbled. “It just needs to be up.”

“French braid do okay? I can do something fancier, but I'll need to wake up more first.”

She stared at him in the mirror. “You can French braid?”

“I was on tour with showgirls for a little over a year,” he replied, sliding his fingers into her hair. “I can do all kinds of things.” Without waiting for a reply, he gently began separating sections of her hair with his fingers, smiling slightly as he recalled the way Dottie Langston's slightly nasal Chicago accent had gone a little soft while she was teaching him to do this, and how patiently Carol Miller had sat there on the ground in front of the bench where he'd been sitting, Dottie leaning over his shoulder to demonstrate the technique. He described the scene to her as his fingers worked through her hair, sectioning it neatly and tying it up tight so that it wouldn't escape due to high winds or high kicks. 

When he finished, she pulled an elastic band off her wrist and handed it to him, and he tied off the end neatly. She checked for strays and flyaways, but his work was solid, and she replaced the bobby pins in her makeup bag before turning to give him a smile. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For this and for the story.”

“Anytime,” he replied, his voice equally soft. 

They stood there for a moment, just a few feet apart, staring at one another. He felt, for just a moment, like his heart might burst; it was the only sound he could really hear, thumping in his ears as she bit her lip and studied him. And then a bang from down the hall shattered the peaceful moment. A girl's voice called out, “Shower's free!” and Darcy's head jerked up. “Dibs for Steve!” she shouted back.

Darcy made a little shooing motion at him. “Better go grab it; there's a couple cousins who still haven't gotten theirs yet, and if you take too long, there could be a brawl.”

“Can't have that,” he replied. He grabbed a clean undershirt, boxers, his pants, and his shower kit, and hurried down the hall.

He made his shower quick; the best he could get out of the tap was lukewarm water, and there were other people who still needed to bathe. When he came out in his suit pants and his undershirt, with the same call of “Shower's free!” to alert the next person, there was a small crowd in the hallway that hadn't been there before. And it seemed to be made up entirely of teenage girl.

There were four of them, and they were clustered at the far end of the hall, away from the room he was sharing with Darcy. They were somewhere in that awkward stage of girl-growth when womanly features begin to develop, breasts to bud and hips to shift, but the limbs have not lost the gangly, coltish look of late childhood and the faces are still entirely too round and baby-soft for cosmetics. He gave them a slight, nervous smile, and a chorus of giggles rose up from their midst like a flock of startled birds. At the sound, his smile turned into a grin, one he'd learned from watching Bucky back in the day, and he winked at them. Then he turned and made his way toward Darcy's room, pretending he didn't hear the babble of high-pitched squeals that followed him through the door.

Darcy raised an eyebrow at him as she finished putting the trundle away and rose from her knees. “What's the noise?”

“I seem to have acquired a fan club.”

Darcy leaned out into the hallway just in time to see the girls disappear into another bedroom. She rolled her eyes. “Poor kids. I wouldn't be thirteen again if you offered me a million dollars. So much awkward, so little clue what to do with it all.”

Steve laughed as he retrieved his shirt and jacket from the closet. “I didn't help much,” he admitted. 

She gave him a quizzical glance and he explained, “I, uh... might have given them the old PR grin-and-wink.” He shrugged into his shirt and reached for his tie.

“Why, Captain Rogers, I declare,” Darcy drawled, dropping into the desk chair and digging into her makeup bag. “Did you _flirt_ with my preteen cousins and make them flutter and giggle?”

He winced. “It sounds so dirty when you say it like that.”

She laughed then, a full, from-the-belly laugh that he hadn't heard from her since before her grandmother had died. “Oh, God, Steve,” she gasped. “I can just imagine what's going to happen now.”

He blinked, turning a worried face toward her. “What?”

“Oh, God.” She fanned her face, which had gone pink with humor. “I can see it. They're going to follow you around all day. Everywhere you go, four sets of eyes, sighing with desperate tweenie desire. And then when they go to bed tonight, it'll be ' _Dear Diary, today Captain America smiled at me in his undershirt. I'm in LOVE._ '” She clasped her hands together over her heart for the final sentence, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.

He rolled his eyes as well, as he began tying his tie. “Let's not get carried away.”

She snorted. “Let's not underestimate the effect those baby blues can have on the fluttering heart of a wild young thing.” 

She'd said it in an airy, teasing tone, but there was something about the words that caught his attention, and he looked up at her, studying her carefully. She was focusing on her makeup, applying her lipstick in the small mirror of her compact, but she glanced up when she noticed he wasn't moving. “What?”

He said nothing, merely watched her for a second, and then he lobbed the same grin-and-wink combo in her direction. Her face went bright red and she spun back to her mirror with a soft, flustered sound, and he filed that away as very, very interesting indeed.

***

They separated at the cemetery; Darcy handed Steve off to the tender mercies of a lady from the temple who he ballparked at around ninety years old. She agreed to make sure he went where he was supposed to and didn't embarrass himself, and Darcy rejoined her family, who were all standing behind the rows of chairs. Steve was gratified to see that she was totally surrounded by her more affectionate cousins; Nora and Angela found themselves pushed to the very fringes of the family group, and Steve would never admit it out loud but there was a tiny, vicious part of him deep inside that bared its teeth in a very snarly sort of smile at that. He didn't like to be that person, but he couldn't help feeling like they deserved it.

There was a shuffling as the close family members passed something small among themselves; Steve watched when Darcy got hers and realized that it was a small pin with a bit of black ribbon attached. Each person pinned their ribbon to their dress, shirt or jacket. There was a moment of silence, and then, at some signal Steve did not see, all of the family members reached up and tore the ribbons they were wearing, reciting a line in what he assumed was Hebrew. The gathered non-family mourners around him murmured a response line, also in Hebrew, and then the family passed up the aisle to the front, where they were all seated in the rows of folding chairs nearest the closed casket.

There was a prayer in Hebrew, and then the Rabbi spoke briefly, telling the abbreviated story of a loving wife, mother and grandmother, devoted and active member of the temple community, and apparently an absolute beast at the bridge table. There was soft laughter that followed this observation, though Steve could see Darcy wiping away tears with the handkerchief he'd pressed upon her before they left the house. There was another prayer then, for which everyone stood. And then Steve felt his eyes widen, because he realized that the casket was being lowered into the ground as they stood there. The Rabbi led further prayer as it vanished into the hole, and as it reached the bottom, there was one final prayer that the entire group participated in. 

Then the gathered mourners went quiet as the family formed up into a line beside the grave. A man in a black suit with a name tag on the lapel came from somewhere behind Steve, carrying a shovel. He pulled back the tarp that had discreetly covered the pile of dirt from the grave, and one by one, each of the mourning family members dropped a shovelful of dirt on the casket before returning to their places. This task was accomplished in near-total silence; the only sounds to be heard were of the wind, the city, and the thumps of earth on wood.

When that was over, the assembled congregants began to form the two lines that Darcy had told him about the previous day. Steve helped the little lady make her way across the uneven grass, and she patted his hand as they stood there for the family to pass. Over and over, the people around him murmured a ritual phrase in Hebrew that Steve did not understand; his companion whispered up to him that it was all right not to say anything, so he stayed silent, only catching Darcy's eye as she passed and hoping his expression said what his words could not. She gave him a gentle half-smile, and that was enough.

Once the last of the family members had passed through the  _Shura_ , the congregation began to break up as people drifted off toward their cars. Steve's minder patted his hand again. “You know,” she said to him as he helped her to her own transport, “my cousin Vera danced with you.”

He blinked at her in surprise. “Vera?” He thought for a second. “Not Vera Cohen?”

The little lady cackled at him. “Yes, indeed! Vera was a cousin of mine. She was quite the scandal, you know, running off to be a showgirl and dancing in pictures with Captain America.” She released him, taking the hand of a man in his forties who was probably her grandson. “She'd have been tickled pink to know you were running around with Sofie's little granddaughter now.”

Steve sighed softly. “She's gone, then.”

“Oh, yes. Ten years ago.” The lady shook her head. “But you can't let it get you down, son. Those days are over, but new and bright ones are ahead! Go on, now, your young lady is looking for you. They'll need to get back to the house and sit _shiva_.” She shooed him away.

He reached out and clasped her hand, drawing it up to his face and pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “It was a pleasure and an honor to escort you today, Miss,” he murmured, giving her Bucky's old grin, and she fluttered at him when he released her. He kept that grin until she was packed safely in her grandson's car, and then he turned, making his way back to Darcy's side. It was sort of fitting, he thought; the past was driving away behind him, but he thought he could see a possible future standing just ahead.


	6. Chapter 6

The environment at the house when they return was, of course, somber; Steve had expected as much. He had not expected to find that someone had been in during their absence. Darcy had been quiet in the car on the way back, and Steve thought it best to leave her alone with her thoughts. It came as a surprise, then, that upon arriving at the house, the first thing that happened was that they stopped at the foot of the front steps, where someone had placed a small table, a pitcher of water, and a hand towel.

Darcy picked up the pitcher and stepped off into the grass, and Steve watched her pour water over her hands, first the right and then the left, three times. She gestured to him that he should do the same. “We do this when we come back from the cemetery,” she explained as she dried her hands. “Water is the source of all life, so when you have contact with death, you do this to remind yourself that you are supposed to be focusing on life.”

Steve nodded, drying his own hands with the towel. “Anything else I should know?”

“Um.” She paused to think, stepping aside as a group of cousins arrive to perform the hand-washing ritual. “Off the top of my head, I can't really think of anything. You're not a direct mourner, so you won't actually be expected to do anything - well, no. Let me rephrase that. You might actually be asked to do a variety of things, like carry out the trash or maybe run errands or something. Direct mourners aren't actually allowed to do anything while sitting _shiva_ ; other people will bring kosher food and things, but since you're both not a direct mourner and a Gentile, you might end up playing fetch-boy.” She made an apologetic face.

He reached up and squeezed her shoulder gently. “Hey, whatever I can do to help,” he said, his voice soft. “It's why I came.”

She looked up at him and gave him a watery smile. “Actually, I think you came because I thought you hated me and I made you feel bad.”

He gave her his best aw-shucks grin. “Well, that, too.” He squeezed her shoulder again. “I mean it, though, Darcy. Whatever you need. Okay?”

She nodded and then paused, biting her lip. “Actually,” she said slowly, “there is one thing.”

“What is it?”

“Could I...” She swallowed hard, a tear escaping from one eye, and the words came out in a whisper. “Could I have a hug, please?”

“Darce.” He pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding her as tightly as he could without hurting her. “You can have all the hugs you need.”

She was crying into his shirt, and he knew it; even though she wasn't making any noise, he could tell by the way her breathing hitched and her fists clenched in the slick cotton under his jacket. He kept one arm around her back, letting the other hand slide up to cradle her head, and he held her close against him, giving her all the comfort he could as she grieved. He knew that they were being watched; they'd been one of the first to arrive back at the house, and her relatives kept arriving, passing them to do the hand-rinsing ritual and then going inside. At one point, a younger woman in a yellow shirt and khaki pants came outside to refill the pitcher, and she gave Steve a look of sympathy as he stood there, still holding Darcy tight.

She finally released him just about the time that Nora and Angela pulled up in the minivan; when they came up the sidewalk, she was pulling Steve's handkerchief out of her purse and mopping at her face. They didn't speak, and she ignored them, focusing instead on making sure she hadn't gotten any makeup on his shirt. “Seriously, this is the best waterproof mascara known to mankind,” she murmured as she dried her eyes. “Not even so much as a spot.”

He laughed. “It'd be okay if there was,” he assured her. “I can change clothes.”

She smiled slightly. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “I'm together. Mostly.”

“Okay,” he echoed. “But Darcy, if you're not, will you let me know?”

She nodded, giving him a slight smile. “Promise.” She took another deep breath, then two, and squared her shoulders. “Shabbat starts at sundown. I can make it until sundown without having a total meltdown in front of everyone, right?”

“If you can't, I'm happy to provide a distraction.”

“You have my full permission to set everything on fire.” She gave him a weak smirk, then headed up the stairs and into the house.

***

Visitors were in and out of the house all day; most stayed for only a few minutes at a time, but a couple of the ladies from the temple stayed to help out, at least until sundown. “It's a _mitzvah_ for us,” one of them explained to Steve around midafternoon, when he was drafted to carry out trash as Darcy had predicted. “Now, there's two meanings to that word. One of them is a commandment, like observing the Sabbath or keeping kosher. But this kind of _mitzvah_ just means a moral act that's performed as part of a religious duty. They're things we do simply because they're acts of kindness, and God wants us to be kind to one another regardless of whether we get anything back. So you visit people who are sitting _shiva_ , and bring food, and that kind of thing.” She patted his arm, then gave him a smile. “You might not be a Jew, but what you did for Darcy, coming all the way from New York for her? That's a _mitzvah_ , too.”

Steve blinked. “You know about that?”

She smiled a little wider. “Sure. We're all terrible gossips around here. Darcy's cousin Leigh - the one with all the hair? - she told me.”

“I see.” Steve hefted the trash bag. “Let me get this out of the way.”

The mood in the house was somber, as Steve had expected, but not oppressively so; the younger teens and children wandered freely, their lively spirits irrepressible despite the sadness of the occasion. The conversation in the living room where the older teens and adults stayed was quiet, but it was mostly focused on stories about Darcy's grandmother, who had by all accounts been a virtual saint. There were the expected outpourings of grief from this or that family member, but every time Steve checked, Darcy was mostly composed. He caught her, once in awhile, wiping away a few tears, but the heavy weeping she'd done into his shirt and jacket earlier had apparently allowed her the breathing space she needed to maintain her equilibrium.

With the approach of sunset, there was a change in the atmosphere. The ladies from the temple made their last condolences and headed home after extracting a promise from Steve that he would take care of anything that needed doing before actual nightfall, and with only family in the house, everything got very quiet for a few minutes. Once the sun disappeared over the horizon, though, it was as though everyone let out a collectively held breath.

“Well,” said Jacob's brother Joshua, “that might go on record as our shortest _shiva_ yet.”

“Mama would be scandalized,” Darcy's uncle Abe pronounced. “Her _shiva_ cut short by Shabbat and then Rosh Hashanah.”

“What are we doing for Rosh Hashanah, anyway?” one of the teenage girls asked. “Are we staying here?”

“You can if you want, but I'm not,” Darcy announced preemptively. “I'm going back to New York.”

“New York, land of Jewish delis and bakeries that sell actual fresh-made matzoh,” Sarah sighed. “Lucky you.”

Darcy laughed. “And don't forget the pizza,” she said. “Pizza everywhere. With pepperoni and bacon.”

“You shut your filthy Reform mouth,” one of the other cousins - Steve couldn't remember his name - teased, and there was laughter all around.

Steve watched from the hallway as Angela, who had been sitting with her mother on the edge of everything in a far corner of the room, stood and collected her purse. “I guess we'll be going,” she announced to the room in general. No one responded. Nora stood as well, collecting her own purse, and the two of them went in search of Angela's boys, who were out in the yard playing with the other children.

Darcy sighed once they were gone, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands. “Ugh.”

Jacob reached out and patted her shoulder. “Don't fret, darlin',” he drawled. “There ain't a thing you can do about it.”

“I know,” Darcy said, rubbing at her face. “I just... It's one thing to objectively know that someone dislikes you, for whatever reason, and it's something entirely different to have them say it to your face like that.”

“Well, _we_ like you,” Sarah said. “So Nora can go fuck herself.”

Darcy laughed softly, looking up to smile at her aunt. “Thanks, Aunt Sarah,” she said. Then she stood. “If y'all will excuse me, I've got to go make arrangements for Steve and I to get home.”

She came out of the living room and started down the hall toward the stairs, pausing in her tracks when she saw him. “Eavesdropping?”

He flushed slightly but shrugged. “Sort of,” he admitted. “Sorry.”

“No, it's all right. I'm about to call Pepper; she said just to let her know when I was ready to come back, and she'd send the plane for us.”

Steve nodded. He followed her upstairs and waited through the call, as Darcy and Pepper arranged for the plane to be in Waco the following afternoon. Then they both packed up their things, saving the clothes they would need for the next day. Steve went down to use the bathroom, and while he was gone, Darcy changed out of her funeral dress and into jeans and a tee shirt, though he noticed that she kept the ribbon pinned to her shirt. He sat down on the bed, toying absently with Major's soft fur while Darcy rooted around in her closet.

“Are you going to keep the house?” he asked her.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Come again?”

“The house,” he said. “Jacob said your grandma left it to you. I was just curious if you'd thought about what you're going to do with it.”

“Ugh. Honestly, no. What do I need with a house in central Texas?” She laughed softly. “But then again... can I just get rid of the house I grew up in? I mean, I don't even have any memories of the house where I lived with my parents. This has always been... home.”

He shrugged. “You could always rent it out,” he offered.

She bit her lip, considering. “That's actually not a half-bad idea,” she said. “I'll have to think about that.”

“You should talk to Pepper,” Steve said. “I bet she knows about stuff like that.”

“Maybe. And even if she doesn't, she's got to have someone on staff that does, since they're renting out the bottom half of the Tower to businesses and things.” She finally shoved her whole body into the small closet and began tossing shoes and small items out onto the floor. Steve retrieved one of the boxes he'd brought up from the car the previous night and opened it, folding the flaps down to make a fairly solid bottom in the absence of any packing tape. Then he started collecting the things she was tossing out, packing several pairs of Converse shoes, a variety of small stuffed animals, and some other mementos into the box.

When Darcy finally emerged, she had an armful of framed photographs that also went into the box, and she sighed as he folded over the top flaps. “Thanks,” she told him, gesturing to the box. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem,” he told her, catching her hand and giving it a warm squeeze. “I told you, anything you need.” Then he paused, a sly smile crossing his face. “Or should I say anything _y'all_ need?”

“Ugggh!” Darcy groaned, shoving at his shoulder. “I _knew_ you were going to catch that. And _no_ , you should _not_ say that; 'y'all' is plural!”

He had to laugh when she put her face in her hands. “I think it's cute,” he admitted. “I've never heard you talk with any kind of Southern accent before.”

“There's a reason for that,” Darcy admitted. “When you're in the South, it's just how everyone talks. But when you leave the South and talk to people who aren't from the South, they automatically subtract a hundred IQ points every time something Southern comes out of your mouth. One of the first things I did when I went off to Culver was learn how  _ not _ to speak with an accent.”

Steve frowned. “That's not fair,” he muttered. “People ought to judge your intelligence by how well you do, not what accent you speak with.”

She reached over and patted him on the head. “Bless your heart, Sugar,” she drawled.

***

The next morning was a busy one for Darcy, who had to sit down with Jacob and discuss the particulars of what her grandmother had left her. Steve packed up the car for their return trip, but two duffels and a single cardboard box didn't really take all that much time and effort, so he found himself at loose ends while she was busy. An idea came to mind as he stood in the hallway looking at all the framed family pictures on the walls, and he looked around for help.

The first person he found who didn't look like they were doing something important was one of the young girls he'd teased the day before. He hadn't caught her name, but he could work around that. She was sitting at one end of the kitchen table, staring out the window into the back yard, so he simply dropped into the chair at the opposite end. “Hi.”

She jerked hard, staring across the table at him in a mixture of awe, fear, and awkward pre-teen crush. “Hi,” she managed.

“So, I need some help with something.”

“O- Okay. Um. What?”

He grinned. “Well, the other day, Darcy and I had kolaches from one of the shops here in town, and they were really good, and I wanted to get some to take home with us. As a surprise. But I don't know how to get there. Do you?”

“Oh, um. Which one did you go to? I know how to get to Czech Stop from here, but...”

“That's the one,” Steve replied. “Wanna be my navigator?”

She blinked. He could actually see the moment when she realized that he was actually asking her to go somewhere with him, and the other cousins were going to be  _ so jealous _ . She smiled brightly and stood. “Let me go tell my mom.”

He stood as well, grinning back. “I'll meet you in the car.”

Alone with him in the car, after a few minutes of ordinary conversation and one missed turning that resulted in a bit of hilarity, the girl - whose name, he managed to learn, was Hannah - managed to relax and realize that she was in the car with someone who was just a guy, and not Famous and Important. He managed to get her to talk about herself, and she told him that she was in the seventh grade, her favorite class was history, she played the trumpet, and her current life's goal was to play in the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band and then go on to be a five-star general. “Or possibly Commandant of the Marine Corps,” she added, as she pointed out the driveway entry into the Czech Stop. “I haven't decided yet.”

“You know he's technically outranked by the Secretary of the Navy, right?” Steve asked as he parked the car.

Hannah hummed thoughtfully. “I didn't think about that.”

Steve grinned. “But they're both outranked by the President.”

She eyeballed him as they got out of the car. “You make an excellent case for politics,” she said. “Unfortunately, I don't think I have the stomach for lies and deception on a global scale.”

“In that case,” Steve replied, pulling the door open and ushering her in ahead of him, “you might want to think about art school.”

***

By the time they got back to the house, Hannah and Steve were fast friends, and she'd posted several pictures on Facebook and sent Snapchats to her school friends to prove it. Then she'd had to explain Snapchat to him, right before installing it on his phone and adding herself as his friend. When they entered the house to find Darcy waiting for them in the living room, Hannah paused to throw her arms around Steve's waist and give him a hug. “You're really cool,” she told him, grinning up at him. “You should come see us again.”

“Well, I'll have to check with Darcy, but I'll sure try,” he promised. He hugged her back, and she bounded off to find her cousins elsewhere in the house.

Steve looked over at Darcy to find her grinning broadly at him. “Trading in for the younger model already?”

“Darcy!” Steve exclaimed, scandalized. “She's in  _ seventh grade _ .”

Darcy laughed, coming over to give him a hug. “I'm just teasing.” She looked at her watch. “Are you about ready to go? Because we'll need to meet the plane in like two hours, and we've got to drop off the car first and everything, and let's be real, it's going to take half an hour just to say goodbye to everyone.”

“I'm ready when you are,” he assured her.

It actually did take nearly half an hour for Darcy to hug everyone, and Steve to shake hands and accept hugs from the children and from Hannah, whom Darcy identified as his new “BFF” - a term he'd have to remember to have her define later. On the way out the door, though, he got the biggest surprise of all. Jacob drew him aside while Darcy was hugging her uncle Abe, and pressed a business card into his hand. “Here's my number,” Jacob said. “I wrote my cell number on the back. If you need anything, son, anything at all, you call me. All right?”

Steve nodded, pocketing the card. “Yes, sir.”

“I mean it,” Jacob told him, reaching out and settling a hand on Steve's shoulder. “Even if it's just that you need me to talk you down from strangling the girl. God knows I love her, but she's a handful.”

Steve grinned broadly at that. “Sir, I'm sure you won't mind me saying this: she's a  _ double _ handful.”

Jacob laughed. “She's all of that and more, son,” he assured Steve. “But I think you can handle her just fine.”

“I'll damn well give it my best shot,” Steve promised. He glanced up as Darcy hopped into the car and beeped the horn, then shook Jacob's hand one more time. “I'll keep you updated.”

“Do that,” Jacob said. “She damn sure won't. For someone that stays glued to her damn phone, she sure as hell never  _ calls _ .”

***

The trip back to the airport went faster than Steve had expected, and he was almost sorry to climb out of the rental car when they arrived. Despite the circumstances, he'd very much enjoyed getting to take this trip with Darcy, to see her in her natural environment and learn where she'd come from. It gave him a much different perspective on her as a person, and he liked that. All too soon, though, they were turning in the keys to the car and carrying their baggage across the tarmac to meet Tony's plane, and even sooner after that, they were in the air on their way back to New York.

Darcy got very excited about the box of kolaches he'd brought, though somewhere over Arkansas she repeated her assertion that her granny's kolaches were far superior to the ones from the store. She said it with her mouth full of a sausage-filled pastry, though, and he took a chance and challenged her assertion. “You know how to make 'em, right? Your granny taught you how.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, sensing a trap.

“Well,” he drawled in his best Brooklyn accent, “if they're so good, maybe you oughta prove it. Put your money where your mouth is and make 'em.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You just want me to make you kolaches because you can't get 'em in New York.”

He shrugged, pretending indifference, and popped a raspberry one into his mouth whole.

She harumphed at him, sitting back on the same couch where they'd had their heart-to-heart, was it only three days ago? What a difference those three days had made. 

He kicked his shoes off and swung his feet up onto the couch as she turned her attention to something on her phone. He waited for a long count of one hundred, and then he nudged her with his toes. She ignored him, so he did it again. She cast him a sideways glance, her eyebrow climbing toward her hairline, and he grinned broadly, doing it again.

Her hand shot down and gripped his big toe, and she shook his foot in a mock-threatening manner. “If you don't stop poking me with your stinky feet, Rogers, I swear to Thor.”

“My feet are not stinky,” he replied, grinning broadly. “I spray stuff in my shoes to be sure.”

She cracked up. “I do not need to know about your personal foot odor combat regimen, thanks.”

He waited until her laughter had settled a bit. “Hey, Darce?”

“Yeah?”

“When we get back to New York... you wanna, maybe, go grab a slice or something? Maybe catch a movie?”

She blinked at him. “Are... you asking me out on a date?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Okay. I just wanted to be sure we were both on the same page.”

He waited for her to say something else, but she didn't, so he prompted her. “Well?”

“Oh.” She paused, studying him again for a long minute, and she smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “I'd like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who's come on this journey with me! Very special thanks go out to Secondalto and Citymusings, my intrepid first readers, who keep me in line and occasionally boost my ego.
> 
> I have mentioned this a few times in comments, but I want to make it official here: there WILL be a sequel to this story. I have to do some _actual_ work for the next couple of days, but I hope to have the first bit of the next story begun soon. And if I don't, feel free to poke me and/or throw things at me. :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(podfic) A Death in the Family](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2301314) by [secondalto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondalto/pseuds/secondalto)




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